1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, profession, marital status):
Corporal Aleksy Jarocki, career soldier, single.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested on 23 December 1939, by the NKVD, for taking part in the Jewish pogrom, and then for participating in Grodno defense (the latter wasn’t done by me, but by my brother, as I was on the front line at that time), and also for being an NCO of the Border Protection Corps. I was sentenced to eight years in absentia.
3. Name of the camp, prison, forced labor site:
I was in Grodno prison, Białystok, and Łomża, then I was taken to a labor camp in the North: Komi ASRR, Uchta 31st p.z. [?], oil mine.
4. Description of the camp, prison:
The camp was newly built by Poles; we slept on bare boards. The quotas they gave us were so hard to fill that almost everybody starved. The diseases spread terribly (scurvy, night blindness). Our doctors did what they could, but there were medicine shortages. Doctors, like Lieutenant Colonel Szmuk and Doctor Szwarc from Warsaw could speak more on mortality.
The Poles themselves lived in peace, but the Jewish individuals (not all) were trying to gain favor of our overseers. Among them was a certain Lewitan from Brześć, who acted like a drover, and did a lot of harm to the Poles.
Letters and parcels reached us, but only a small share of them.
I was released based on the amnesty on 27 August 1941, and I headed directly to the rallying point where our units were being formed. I was incorporated in September of 1941.