1. Personal data:
Platoon Sergeant Stanisław Gąsowski, born on 29 October 1890, a farmer by occupation, married.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested by the NKVD on 14 July 1940 and charged with being an active collaborator of the Polish Military Organization. As a matter of fact, I had been turned in by a member of this organization, one Aleksander Smalkowski, resident in Dąbrówka Kościelna, who knew a number of our co-conspirators from Białystok and Mińsk in person, and readily gave us all away. In the prisons in Białystok and Mińsk, I was heavily beaten and otherwise tortured in the hope that I would turn in the Polish organization. But I would have preferred death to becoming a traitor.
3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
I was detained at the prison in Białystok between 15 and 29 July. Thereafter they sent me to the prison in Mińsk, where I was incarcerated until 2 February 1941, when I was deported to the Ukhta forced labor camp in the Komi Republic.
4. Description of the camp, prison:
They threw me into an endless forest, where I worked for two months at a lesopoval [a tree- felling area]. Clothing and food were lacking, and there were no bathing facilities.
5. Social composition of POWs, prisoners, deportees:
The deportees were all Polish citizens of both Polish and Russian ethnicity. Mutual relations were on the whole very bad, for there were Poles who would inform on their countrymen to the NKVD.
6. Life in the camp, prison:
Life in the camp was extremely difficult, for we had to work from 6.30 a.m. until 5.00 p.m., with a one-hour dinner break by a fire in the forest. The food was poor in the extreme, while our clothes comprised no more than a donkey jacket, quilted trousers, and shoes made from an old tire.
7. Attitude of the authorities, NKVD towards Poles:
The authorities treated us like dogs – if you so much as squeaked, they would lock you up in the punishment cell, and they also enjoyed repeating that “the Poland of their lordships has disappeared for good, so you will live and die here without ever seeing your Poland again”.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate:
After two months of working in the forest, I fell ill with scurvy and was sent to the hospital, where I lay for three months. Patients were considered worthless dogs. Some thirty people died in this camp, but I only knew one of them, Władysław Godlewski.
9. Was it at all possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family? If yes, then what contacts were permitted?
I had no contact with the home country.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
I was released from the forced labor camp on 17 November 1941 and directed to Buzuluk. I appeared before a Recruitment Committee in Guzar and was accepted for service in the Polish Army.
7 February 1943