1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, occupation, and marital status):
Gunner Bernard Graczyk, 18 years old, student until the outbreak of war.
2. Date and circumstances of the arrest:
I was arrested and deported for so-called non-confined exile on 18 April 1940.
3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
I lived in the Kazakh Republic near Pavlodar, and then in [illegible].
4. Description of the camp, prison:
I lived in the countryside in a kolkhoz. The conditions were very poor. The building was low, made of clay. Very bad hygiene.
5. Social composition of prisoners, deportees:
Apart from myself, there were many other Poles, Belarusians, and Jews. According to the NKVD we were bourgeois, great heirs, and masters. The moral standing was very low, people were constantly swearing. As for education, there were schools but the scope was limited.
6. Life in the camp, prison:
Initially while in exile I wasn’t given work. Once I’d managed to push my way in, work began at 7.00 a.m., lunch was at noon, for an hour. I was paid about 250 rubles per month for the work, which was loading grain. However, a pood of wheat cost 300 rubles. The above already illustrates the conditions we lived in. I don’t even want to talk about the clothes.
7. Attitude of the NKVD towards Poles:
It should be pointed out that Poles were very close-knit. The locals actually treated us fairly well. The NKVD simply treated us like… I don’t know. Like major criminals. They would constantly ask us about Poland, the living conditions in Poland, and things like that.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality:
Medical assistance for workers was relatively good. There was one hospital for the entire region and it was too small to accommodate all the sick. That resulted in some fatalities. Many people died not of disease, but traveling from village to village in the winter to earn a living.
9. Was it possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family?
Before the outbreak of war we received letters from my father from Warsaw and generally from Poles living in areas occupied by the Germans, just like from people living in areas occupied by the USSR.
10. When were you released and how did you join the army?
On 10 February 1942, quite a long time after the amnesty, mobilization was announced. The NKVD themselves sent us to a draft board and following a 15-day journey I reached the town of Lugovoy, where I was drafted into the artillery. I received a uniform on 26 February.