SEWERYNA FILRIT

Volunteer Seweryna Firlit, born in 1924, a student.

On 10 February 1940, I was sent into exile from Nowosielec-Zarawna – the Bóbrka district, Lwów voivodeship – to Altai Krai, uczastek 22, barrack 98, the Kozicha Krutszynski [?] region. I worked in the forest felling wood. The work quota was set at 7 cubic meters and we were paid 3,5 rubles for sawing that amount of wood.

The camp was located in the forest. There was one wooden barrack with a kitchen in the middle. Hygienic conditions were very bad. There were three hundred people of Polish nationality lodged in the barracks. The intellectual level was average. Mutual relations were quite good.

The daily schedule. We worked from 7.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. in the woods. The conditions were very poor and we were paid very little.

The food we were given was bad and we received no clothes, but we got along well with each other. Cultural life was quite mediocre.

The NKVD was very hostile to us. Imprisonment was the way in which we were punished. Communist propaganda was used to disparage religion and to weaken national sentiments. We had no information about Poland, and we had to rely on conjecture in this regard.

There were hospitals but medical care was poor. Fatal accidents were frequent and people suffered from typhus. I don’t remember any names.

I received no letters from Poland.