1. Personal data:
Platoon Leader Stefan Kulesza, 39 years old, farmer, married.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was taken captive by the Germans in 1939, during the retreat from Ostrołęka. I was deported with a great many other prisoners of war to East Prussia. After a few days we were sent to work on an estate. I didn’t for one moment abandon my plan to escape, so I took the first opportunity and on 12 March 1940 I fled to Lithuania. After a dozen or so hours of walking around in Lithuania, I was arrested by a Lithuanian policeman and placed in the internee camp in Wyłkowyszki, from where in the middle of July 1940 the Bolsheviks deported me together with the entire camp into the Russian interior. We travelled 40 people to a wagon, with doors closed shut and windows barred.
4. Description of the camp, prison etc.:
Pavlishev Bor, called the Yukhnovsky Camp: it had been the residence of Count Orlov. It was a pretty palace on the river, surrounded with a park, ponds and a pine forest. On the side of the road, there still stood a part of a brick wall and the entrance gate to the palace. Of course the palace was taken up by our guardians – political commissars, and we were quartered in stables, pigsties, and sheep pens that were converted to human abodes by cutting out window holes. The bigger coach house served as a club, and next to it was the infirmary. Just behind the barbed wire fence there was a bathhouse, a washroom and a power station. At each corner of the fence there were so-called dovecotes for the guards. Strong searchlights, which illuminated the area on both sides of the fence, were placed on posts. The dovecotes had telephone contact with the camp command, so they were able to alert them at any moment. The space between the wires was plowed and raked. The barracks were furnished with three-story pallets, and the lower ones with two-story pallets. They were overflowing with people. The barracks were stuffy, cramped and bug-infested. They had been previously occupied by POWs from 1939.
5. The composition of prisoners of war, inmates, exiles:
There were mainly Poles there, non-commissioned officers and riflemen. Officers, policemen and gendarmes had already been sent to another camp from Maladzyechna.
6. Life in the camp, prison:
An hour after wake-up there was a roll call – held every day regardless of weather – during which we were counted off. We performed various tasks and maintenance works on the camp premises, in the bathhouse or the garage. We received 700 grams of bread, some kasha and all sorts of fish. The groups that worked received additional kasha for supper. As for clothes, we wore our coats and military boots from Poland which were in quite a good condition. It was worse with uniforms and trousers, which had a lot of patches on elbows and knees. Those who enjoyed a privileged status and some of those who worked were issued padded jackets and quilted trousers.
In our free time, which we had in abundance, we made shoes, played chess etc. We took walks ad nauseam, and read the books we ourselves had brought from the library in Wyłkowyszki. At the camp there was a Soviet library, and Soviet newspapers and radio. Everything was filled with Communist propaganda, not to mention the constant influence of the horde of political commissars. Under the strict supervision of the camp command, a camp choir was organized, which Corporal Dylong became the conductor of, and an orchestra was also established. From time to time, there were concerts and film screenings – usually featuring tractors, kolkhozes etc. Each organized event was preceded with a beseda [talk] given by a political commissar, as it was the only opportunity to address a larger group of people who had gathered of their own free will. The period of my stay at the Yukhnovsky camp was the time during which the Soviets “developed” their friendship with the Germans, which was widely discussed in the press, the radio, and by the political commissars, who often got themselves into trouble on account of that during discussions, as questions posed by the bolder internees were usually beyond the comprehension of a political commissar, and when the internees told them “you’ll be fighting the Germans anyway”, the Soviets would be boiling with rage. They also got on our nerves, constantly repeating that “Poland will never be restored, there was never any Poland before, you don’t have any history of your own” and a lot of other nonsense. All our holidays were preceded with a series of anti- religious talks. With regard to that, there was a split between the internees, and those who eagerly attended these talks were generally harassed by the believers. A so-called non- religious community functioned in the camp. Its members gathered in the evenings for Communist talks. They studied Marx, Engels and others. Only those who the “first corps” ascertained had been active in the Communist movement back in Poland were admitted to the community, but there were also some who took leave of their senses as a result of the omnipresent propaganda.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate:
A Soviet doctor was the chief doctor of the camp. Our doctors were employed in the infirmary. The gravely ill were sent to the local hospital, and critical cases were taken to a civilian hospital in Yukhnov, where I heard the medical assistance was very good. From July 1940 to May 1941, there were three fatal accidents in the group of about 3,000 people.
9. Was there any possibility of getting in contact with one’s country and family?
After six months at the camp we were allowed to write letters to our families. All my letters were delivered to my wife, but it took no less than five to six weeks for a letter to reach its addressee. The NKVD used the correspondence between the internees and their families to verify whether they had given true information concerning their place of residence and family members who remained in Poland. In view of that, some prisoners preferred not to write. All parcels were checked, but they were also delivered without delay.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
When we arrived at our work site, that is, the Kola Peninsula, they dropped all pretense of treating us as internees. We travelled in train cars that were as overcrowded and as tightly shut [as previously], but it was a luxurious ride in comparison with the journey on board the “Klara Zetkin” from Murmansk to Ponoy. Hungry, cold, dirty and completely disheartened, we disembarked in the far north.
We revived upon learning that the Germans had already begun fighting the Bolsheviks. We waited impatiently for further news, for any change in our fate. In the meantime, we were driven to work 12 hours per day, not counting the two hours we walked to work. We were to build an airport at the polar rocks. We no longer deluded ourselves: we had been brought there for extermination, for death, as the work quota surpassed the strength of even the sturdiest man, and 200 grams of bread and some flour couldn’t give enough strength to survive this backbreaking toil. Nobody met the quota, not even those from the community, although they tried to accomplish this in the first days.
Finally, we got the news: the end of work – you’re free. I have no words to describe the happiness and joy felt by the exiles.
The return journey by ship and by train was exactly like the previous one, the experience of which is known only to those who have “travelled” in the Soviet territory out of necessity. It was our last journey with barred windows.
On 27 July [1941] we returned to the camp in Vyazniki. Colonel Sulik[-Sarnowski], a delegate of the Polish government, came there to announce to us that we were again Polish soldiers, and that Polish Army was being raised and organized in the USSR. Having arrived in Tatishchevo on 15 September 1941, I was enlisted into the 13th Infantry Regiment.
12 January 1943