1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, army postal service number, age, occupation, marital status):
Senior Rifleman Lucjan Czaporowski, born on 13 December 1904, judge of the district court in Łuck, married, one child, army postal service number 111.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested on 18 September 1939 on a street in Równe, together with Michał Roszkowski, vice-president of the district court in Łuck, by a militiaman who had first checked our identity papers.
3. Name of the camp, prison or forced labor site:
Prisons in Równe, Dubno, Kiev, Kharkiv, and labor camps no 4, 6, 8 and 9 on the Ukhta– Krutaya road.
4. Description of the camp, prison etc. (grounds, buildings, housing conditions, hygiene):
Prisons in Kharkiv and Kiev: brick buildings, no space to lie down in the cells and corridors, sometimes even no space to sit down; cramped, dirty place, awful toilets; it was often impossible even to rinse our eyes with water or wash our hands. Camps: wooden barracks or tents made of sheets; wooded grounds; cold, dirt, no shoes and clothes, one’s own things stolen by zhuliks [petty thieves].
5. The composition of POWs, prisoners, exiles (nationality, category of crimes, intellectual and moral standing, mutual relations etc.):
The composition of prisoners in Równe was very varied. On the one hand there were well- educated people, some of them holding high posts, and on the other there were bandits and thieves. The majority of the prisoners were Poles; there were also a few Russians, hostile towards Poland and Poles, and there was a village administrator who was an informer. Mutual relations among the Poles were bearable. Between the Poles and some of the Russians – hostile. The situation in Dubno was exactly the same, except for the fact that in a few cells in which I was incarcerated there were only Polish prisoners. Many members of the intelligentsia had very low morals. In the camps, mutual relations among the Poles varied significantly, but egotism prevailed.
6. Life in the camp, prison etc. (daily routine, working conditions, work quotas, remuneration, food, clothes, social and cultural life etc.):
Life in the camps: wake-up at 4.00 or 5.00 a.m., breakfast, setting off for work at 6.00 or 7.00 a.m. The work, usually very exhausting, lasted from 10 to 12 hours per day. Daily work quotas: for instance digging up five stumps, each over 50 cm thick, with the use of an axe and a pickaxe or a shovel, from frozen soil; felling and arranging 4 cubic meters of timber in piles from trees 16 [illegible] thick, cutting and burning branches; covering a roof with the so- called “Finnish wood fibers” – 16 square meters without nails, only with rusty wire cut into nails, etc. Food: usually 400 grams of bread, often half-baked and soggy, and some watery oat or millet soup twice a day. I didn’t receive any remuneration; for the whole stay I earned 1 ruble and 50 kopecks. Clothes were despicable and ragged. Social life was very poor, and cultural life was non-existent. The monotony of the prison life was varied with chess matches, with chess pieces made of bread ([illegible]), or recounting to the others the novels we had read or telling some other stories.
7. The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles (interrogation methods, torture and other forms of punishment, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
As far as I am concerned, the NKVD behaved quite decently during interrogations. Apart from sarcasm against the Poles in general and against Poland, I wasn’t subjected to anything resembling torture; the Communist propaganda was promptly abandoned. I told them about the life of a laborer, peasant and member of the intelligentsia in Poland; they listened with incredulity and amazement.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate (give the names of the deceased):
The medical assistance was very often insufficient, and sometimes there were no medicaments, or next to none. In the prisons in Poland, the medical assistance kept deteriorating as they ran short of supplies. As for the doctors, one believed in total commitment, while the others wanted to pursue a career (I’m talking about the doctors from Poland).
9. Was there any possibility to get in contact with one’s country and family?
In the prison in Równe I received two packages with underwear, but apart from that I didn’t have any contact with my country and family.
10. When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?
I was released from the camp on 5 September 1941, and when I arrived in Kotlas I left with a transport for Buzuluk, or to be precise to Totskoye, where I joined the army on 23 September 1941.
L.S., 2 March 1943