TADEUSZ KOBYLARZ

1. [Personal data:]

Cadet sergeant Tadeusz Kobylarz, 30 years old, senior border guard, unmarried.

2. [Date and circumstances of arrest:]

On 22 August 1940 I was taken from the Ulbroka internee camp in Latvia by the Bolsheviks.

3. [The name of the camp, prison, or place of forced labor:]

Kozielsk

4. [Description of the camp, prison etc.:]

The camp in Kozielsk was located in a former monastery. Housing conditions were generally good.

5. [The composition of prisoners-of-war, inmates, exiles:]

Those detained in the camp were army and police officers, border guards, and civilians – mostly those whom the Bolsheviks regarded as a threat.

6. [Life in the camp, prison life:]

Life in the camp was very monotonous. We spent our time learning foreign languages and playing chess. The food was fairly decent. No clothes were provided for us. As regards cultural life, there was a cinema in the camp, but every film was a very naive and stupid piece of propaganda. Apart from that, there was a Polish choir and an orchestra.

7. [The NKVD’s attitude towards the Poles:]

I was interrogated three times. They asked me about my service as a border guard and the situation on the German border. I was not beaten during the interrogation. Political officers spread Communist propaganda, but the Poles always laughed at them.

8. [Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate:]
There was a hospital on the camp grounds, but I was never a patient there. Several deaths
occurred among the internees and two people committed suicide by hanging themselves.

9. [What, if any, was your contact with the home country and your family?]

I received no letters from home during my entire stay at the camp. Three letters from home were handed to me only a few days before I was transported to the Kola Peninsula. Other internees received letters quite often, some even got packages with food.

10. [When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?]

In June 1941, I was transported to the Kola Peninsula. From that moment on, we were treated like prisoners and dealt with in a brutal manner. We were transported on board the ship “Klara Zetkin” in terrible, cramped conditions. We received very little food and when we arrived – having had trouble anchoring on account of the stormy seas – we were not fed at all for three days. There were no accommodations on this peninsula apart from several tents. Some of us had to sleep in the open air. There was no bedding or furniture inside the tents. Our task on the peninsula consisted in building a road and working in the port. Food was insufficient, we were given soup, foul-smelling fish, and very little bread – sometimes as little as 75 grams per day. If it were not for the war, 80 percent of us would not have survived one winter. People started swelling up due to hunger and the local climate. We stayed on the peninsula about two weeks. They treated us brutally and said that we were going to die there. We were transported from the Kola Peninsula first to Arkhangelsk, and then to the camp in Suzdal. Their treatment of us did not change during our journey back, some of us were beaten with rifle butts. Conditions in Suzdal were better. This was where we learned about the treaty with Poland. I joined the Polish army there in August 1941, when Colonel Sulik-Sarnowski visited the camp. From Suzdal we went to Tatishchevo – no longer under escort.