Senior sergeant Cezary Makarewicz, 5th tank battalion (1st Uhlan regiment)
In 1939, after the fighting near Kock, on the night between the 5th and 6th of October, Germans partly scattered the 3rd Regiment of cavalry shooters, where I served as a non- commissioned officer in the position of platoon commander, partly surrounding it and taking prisoners. We – a couple of soldiers and the deputy colonel Stefan Platonoff – managed to run off with our weapons and the platoon flag, and we wandered around until 15 October, when we hid the arms and the flag. Then I returned home with the plan to get into the Polish Army, which was being formed in France. And so I set off to do so.
On 21 November 1939, we set off for the Polish-Hungarian border by train via Baranowicze and Lwów to Stanisławów, and then by bus to Nadwórna, and finally on foot. We were walking in a group of three, that is me, senior sergeant Józef Dzięciołowski (presently 18th battalion of riflemen) and master corporal Ignacy Kopacz. The latter lost his way at night, so the two of us remained. The journey was hard as the road was unknown to us, the compass and map we were using was in the possession of the missing Corporal Kopacz, and the snow had covered everything so that we couldn’t see the paths. That’s how we lost our way. On 29 November we encountered a local dweller of Ukrainian nationality, who offered to guide us across the border for 200 zlotys. After we paid him 200 zlotys for guiding us and 50 for getting us some food, he led the way to an empty hut – our hideaway until dusk, when he was supposed to come back to take us across. He himself allegedly went to buy the food. I took off my shoes in the meantime to dry them a little since it was really wet because of the snow.
Meanwhile, instead of bread, our guide brought two Soviet border guard lieutenants, who stood at the door and opened fire on us, shouting: ruki wwierch, wychadi polskaja swołocz! I was barefoot at the time because I’d been drying my boots. Not allowing us even to bend over, they ran us out towards the watchtower. They were driving me barefoot through the snowy mud for the whole way, making us keep our hands in the air, and the son of the man who had sold us out was carrying my boots behind us.
Having brought us to the watchtower in Rafajłowa, they began an investigation against us. The investigation was conducted in an uncivilized, Soviet bandit-like way. They were kicking us without any consideration for our body parts. Gowory, kuda uszoł? Polskaja swołocz! W bandu Sikorskogo! Fighting s Krasnoj Armiej. After drawing up a protocol they threw us into a cellar under a forester’s hut, eight by six meters in size and paved with stone. There were already 37 people like us inside, and after two days the number rose to 67.
We would lay down to sleep on the sharp stones, squeezing in one next to another, because there was no space to spread at all. Seven people would always be sitting on the stairs for the whole night, and there was one bucket to deal with our bodily needs. At night, whenever somebody wanted to make their way to the bucket, they had to creep on all fours over other people’s heads, and then wake up the person next to the bucket so that this person wouldn’t get splashed. The chief of all this was lieutenant Rybakow. Any time he entered the cellar to call somebody out, he would be holding a gun and shouting: Łażyś, ruki wwierch!, pointing the gun at us and then calling out the person. We could only stand back up after the door had closed behind him.
Our nourishment consisted of soup which we carried from the kitchen in four 10-liter buckets –sometimes while we were doing so, a liter from each would spill out because the kitchen was a kilometer away, over a rough, slippery road. There were thus 36 liters of soup for 67 people. We had four bowls that we ate from one after another, and no spoon. Truth be told the spoons weren’t necessary, since the soup was so thin we could drink it. Along with the soup, we were given a 2 kilogram loaf of bread for every 12 people. Such a meal was given out twice a day, at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m.
We were sitting in the cellar for 14 days, some of us for 21. Then we were taken to Nadwórna and packed into a similar cellar. It got even worse there, and that’s because there was no place to wash ourselves, and the lice plagued us. We stayed in Nadwórna for 9 days and then we were transported to Stanisławów, where we [spent] only three days, and next we were loaded onto a train. They put 48 of us into a 10-ton wagon so there was no chance to sleep again: firstly because it was so tight, and secondly – even though there was a stove – they wouldn’t provide any fuel. And heavy frosts were prevalent at that time, as our trip from Stanisławów to Odessa took place between 26 December and 1 January. Throughout the whole journey, they were feeding us a two-kilogram loaf of bread for every seven people and a piece of very salty fish. After such a meal, though we were still hungry, our thirst was extreme. When we requested water, they would promise to give us some at the next station because there was no water at the current one. And when we got to that station and demanded it again, a Soviet guard would get into the wagon and strike the person who’d asked for water with a rifle butt. And so the journey from one water station to another would last for 48 hours, where we’d be given one bucket for 48 people.
After getting us inside of the prison walls in Odessa, they took us to bathrooms where we cleaned ourselves up from the dirt and lousiness, and then they closed us up in cells, seven prisoners each. The cell was 3.6 meters long and 2 meters wide (we measured this with a match, assuming it was 5 cm long).
There were three iron beds and one small cupboard for plates in such a cell. Beds were 67 cm in width, forged from iron bars. Two people had to sleep in each, and one person on the floor. How would two people fit into such a tight and, moreover, deep bed? We had to position ourselves in such a way that one person would head in one direction and another in the opposite. As a result, we would face each other’s feet, and we had to sleep perfectly straight for the whole night, as there was no way to bend our legs, because – as I mentioned – the beds were deep and had sharp edges. If one wanted to turn to another side, he’d have to wake up the other person and then they would have to both get up and lie down again to finally switch sides. The pallets were very thin and must have been filled 5 years before, because there was only chaff and dust in them. The bottom of the bed was made of iron bars forged together about 30 cm halfway through, and they were hurting our ribs through the flimsy pallets. The seventh person, who slept on the asphalt floor, was in the best position, even though he was cold and didn’t have anything apart from his jacket and coat to sleep on.
We slept like this from 1 January until 23 March 1940. On that day, a new transport of similar prisoners from Lwów arrived, and they added five people to each cell so there were twelve of us. At that point we were ordered to throw away the beds and we all slept on the floor, which didn’t mean there was more room.
The food rations varied, as sometimes they would give us 10 or 11 potatoes in their skins for twelve people, and half a pickle each. Some of the potatoes were rotten, so that made half a potato apiece. The only thing they consistently provided was 600 grams of bread, but the soup they served was almost exclusively water without any fat. From time to time they would also serve us tiny fish called ciulka [тюљка].
The worst thing was tobacco, because they would barely provide us any, and even if they did, it was up to five or six cigarettes for 12 people. So once in a while someone would barter their last share of bread for two cigarettes with the Soviet prisoners who had some tobacco. But how would one conduct such an exchange, with them sitting in another cell? You had to unweave a sock into threads and make a string out of them, tie a portion of bread to it and throw it out through the bars of the cell window into the window next to it, where the Russkies were sitting, and then get the cigarettes the same way. Such an exchange was very risky because the string could break and the bread would fall on the ground, and then you ended up with no bread and no cigarettes. Or even worse, had a guard noticed such a transaction, he would have taken away the bread and thrown the inmate who had been trying to exchange the bread into solitary confinement for five days, where they’d be given only 300 grams of bread and a glass of water once a day, and they wouldn’t know night from day because it was so dark. The only alternative was to pull the chaff out of the pallets and find a piece of newspaper in a trash bin on our way to the toilet, make cigarettes out of it and puff them.
We lived in these conditions from 1 January until 5 September 1940. Meanwhile, every night they woke up somebody from the cellar and took them to an interrogation. On 5 September they sentenced me to 5 years in labor camps in the North. My journey from the prison to the camp took place from 5 September to 19 October. Initially we were going by train, and after reaching northern Dźwina they loaded us onto barges. The food rations were just like on the way to Odessa, but the Bolshevik supply officers were stealing from us. Once, some prisoner – whose name I do not recall – demanded the whole portion. They tied him up with his hands behind his back and made him lie on the deck on his chest for an entire day, with a sentinel watching over him. And at that time it was really cold, as it was the second half of October in the North. When they released him, he was literally blue with cold.
Next day, after arriving at the camp, they chased us off to work and ordered us to fill the quotas. The quotas were extremely high – personally, even if it had been my dearest wish to fill the day’s quota, I wouldn’t have actually done it even in two days. And when [somebody] hadn’t filled the quota, initially they would only give them the first cauldron.
For the first cauldron, served in the morning, they gave 500 grams of bread and half a liter of a thin porridge, and then the same soup in the evening together with 50 grams of fish. So the whole daily ration consisted of 500 gram of bread, a liter of porridge and 50 grams of fish. Then, after a few weeks, if you hadn’t been filling the quota, they would still give you the first cauldron, but right after you got back from work – wet after a day of work in the snow – they would place you in the isolation cell, where it was extremely cold and impossible to sleep without freezing to death. You had to run around for the whole night to warm yourself up. Truth be told, it wasn’t much better in the barracks, which were equally cold, dirty, and full of lice.
After getting back from work, everybody would take their shirt off and force their way to the light bulb, the only one in a barrack for 90 people, to do some hunting in their shirt, where sometimes hundreds of living things would reside.
Given such labor, nutrition, and hygiene, people started to weaken and swell and, added to that, scurvy was prevalent due to lack of vitamins –legs were swelling, teeth were falling out. Whoever fell ill with this sickness was prescribed “scurvish” [“cyngolne”] by the doctor, which they made from raw potatoes and rotten cabbage, blended and served to eat. In any country around the world a pig wouldn’t touch this, but here people would pay 3 rubles to take somebody else’s portion.
I got ill with scurvy, my legs swelled so much that I couldn’t put on my trousers, so they drove me to the hospital where I stayed for three weeks before I got a little better. After releasing me from the hospital they assigned me to słab komandy 2, which meant I was absolutely unable to do any physical labor. In spite of that, they assigned me to assisting in making coffins for our departed. We were making the coffins from waste wood, or wood we had broken up from the boxes that fish were shipped in, piecing the coffins together from the remaining boards. A chicken would fall out of such a coffin, because it was only a coffin in name, really. Later, when I felt better, they ordered me to make barrel staves.
Initially, it was necessary to make 140 pieces, each 90 cm long, to meet the daily quota. Then they raised the quota to 180 pieces. I had never made more than 70 pieces a day. It wasn’t just me who couldn’t meet their damned norm, three quarters of the people couldn’t. And those who put all possible effort into fill it were the first to bite the dust. Even the strongest man, in such conditions, could only fill the quota for a week or two at most. Later he would get weak and cease to work completely, and then they would put him in the punishment cell every night because they considered him a markierand [faker], saying: he worked when he felt like it, and now he just doesn’t.
How could one possibly have any energy with such nourishment? Let me give an example: I was eating my ration of fish and I carefully picked the fish bones out, actually not just picked them, but also licked them, and threw them away. So a fellow inmate, when he saw this, picked up the bones and started licking them again. Such things were happening a lot, every day. For instance, people were looking through trash bins in the kitchen, searching for a fish head. Because of that the mortality was huge, never would a day go by without one of us dying, and usually it would be two or three.
I know the personal details about only one person whom I had been locked up with since the beginning. This was Jan Perekładowski, cadet of the 1st cadet corps, son of an officer of the 6th cavalry regiment riflemen from Żółkiew; he died on 12 May 1941 in the hospital in Tobyś.
I do not know the personal details of the following people, but remember them by surname and know for sure they died.
1. Łusy, from Lwów: he lay next to me, and died by my side;
2. Szydłowski, from near Grodno;
3. Czyżewski, from near Grodno;
4. Czypulonek, from the Wilno region.