1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, Field Post Office no., age, occupation and civil status):
Corporal Konstanty Granacki, 29 years old, a farmer by occupation, unmarried, Field Post Office no. 163.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested on 26 August 1940 for brawling with members of the Komsomol.
3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
From 30 August to 30 September 1940, I was incarcerated in Grodno prison, from 10 September to 10 October in Minsk (a transit camp), from 28 October to 15 February 1941 in Arżor Berzońska in the USSR (forced labor camp), and from 1 March to 15 September [1941] in Velsk (forced labor camp).
4. Description of the camp, prison, etc. (grounds, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
The camp in Arżor Berzońska was located in the steppe, and we had to sleep on the ground in our clothes (there were no tents). Hygienic conditions were terrible – we had no soap and no water, and soon everyone was covered with lice, which in the circumstances were impossible to eradicate. The camp in Velsk was situated in a forest. We slept on plank beds and were given bedlinen. Hygienic conditions there were very good.
5. Social composition of POWs and prisoners (nationality, category of crimes, intellectual and moral level, mutual relations, etc.):
Right until the amnesty, I was in the company of only one Pole; the other prisoners were Bolshevik citizens. Their attitude towards us was on the whole friendly.
6. Life in the camp, prison, etc. (the course of an average day, working conditions, quotas and norms, wages, food, clothing, social and cultural life):
In summer, we labored shoring up a railway embankment, while in winter we felled trees in the forest. Work started at 7.00 a.m. and lasted until sundown, with only an hour’s break.
To carry out the norm, we had to fell 11 meters of forest and ready the trunks for transport on sledges, or move 5 cubic meters of earth to the railway embankment. Clothes: donkey jackets, quilted trousers [illegible]. Mutual relations were good, and our social and cultural life was acceptable.
7. Attitude of the authorities, NKVD towards Poles (methods of interrogation, torture, punishments, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
The attitude of the authorities and the NKVD to us Poles was extremely hostile. The Soviet authorities disseminated falsities about Poland in order to win us over to the Soviet side.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate (provide the surnames of those who perished):
Medical care was poor, and the mortality rate high. Dąbrowski, a farmer aged around 45, died in the hospital of dysentery in 1941.
9. Was it at all possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family? If yes, then what contacts were permitted?
You were allowed to write home only in Russian, and although I did send a few letters, I received none.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
I was released from the camp on 15 September 1941 and received some material assistance from the Soviet authorities.
Official stamp, 15 March 1943