1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, Field Post Office number, age, occupation, marital status):
Gunner Wincenty Krajewski, born in 1914, student of the Lwów University of Technology, Polish Force Paiforce 163.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
23 January 1940, Zaleszczyki – for crossing the Romanian border.
3. Name of the camp, prison or forced labor site:
Forced labor site: Lager Jug.
4. Description of the camp, prison etc. (grounds, buildings, housing conditions, hygiene):
A camp in the taiga, swampy grounds, barracks fenced with wire. Acute lack of all necessities of living.
5. The composition of POWs, prisoners, exiles (nationality, category of crimes, intellectual and moral standing, mutual relations etc.):
There were 6,000 prisoners in the camp, the majority of whom – 40 percent – were Russians, criminals. Poles were 20 percent. Low intellectual level. Morals low beyond belief.
6. Life in the camp, prison etc. (daily routine, working conditions, work quotas, remuneration, food, clothes, social life etc.):
For failure to meet the work quota we were punished with solitary confinement in a wooden shack. Before they put you there they stripped you naked, even though the temperature was 40 degrees below zero.
During the first months at least 30 people died each day due to diseases and hunger. The work quotas were impossible [to be filled] by an average person, even if the conditions had been good, and food depended solely on meeting the quota. An enfeebled person was bound to perish almost straight away.
7. The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles (interrogation methods, torture and other forms of punishment, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
The NKVD’s attitude was inhumane and unprecedented in the history of man. Interrogation methods: we were fed with herrings but denied water, and forced with a gun pointed at us to sign made-up charges.
Information about Poland: they tried to inculcate in us the belief that Poland would never be restored, and told us over and over that Poland had been a country where only certain individuals had really lived, whereas the peasants had been tormented.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate (give the names of the deceased):
There wasn’t any medical assistance; various diseases, mainly scurvy and typhoid fever, spread in the camp, causing the deaths of thousands.
9. Was there any possibility to get in contact with one’s country and family?
There wasn’t any.
10. When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?
On 24 September 1941; on 20 February 1942 I joined the army, the 9th Infantry Division.
Official stamp, 15 March 1943