SABINA KRAJEWSKA


Volunteer Sabina Krajewska, born on 30 March 1899 in Łozówka, Trembowla commune, tarnopolskie voivodeship, married, recently resident of Czortków, tarnopolskie voivodeship.


I was arrested on the street in Czortków on 22 March 1940. A letter which I had written to my imprisoned husband was the reason for my arrest. This letter was intercepted by the NKVD. I was imprisoned until 13 April 1940, and during that time I was interrogated several times, also at night. I shared a cell with Mrs Kownacka – a Polish citizen residing in the vicinity of Czortków; Mrs Kosiba – the wife of a scout of the Border Protection Corps; and a teacher from Mielnica, whose surname I’ve forgotten.

On 13 April, Mrs Kosiba and I were taken by car to our homes to collect our families. I was transported in a truck with my 16-year-old ward to a train car, and we left Poland on the same day. We travelled for three weeks in boxcars. At the station of Shemonaikha, Ust-Kamenogorsk Oblast, Kazakhstan, we were loaded onto trucks and taken to the village of Trekhgornoye. We lived in one room along with Judge Wojtasiewicz, his wife and child. I performed farm labor and worked at construction sites, shoveling snow, in a pigsty etc. Remuneration depended on the work; I earned about 50 rubles per month. All those who worked could buy 500 grams of bread per day. I scraped together a living by selling everything I had taken from home, but I didn’t manage to take much, as they didn’t give me enough time for that.

The locals treated us well. They even bemoaned our fate.

In 1942 I went to Guzar and joined the Women’s Auxiliary Service.

8 March 1943