1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, Field Post Office number, age, occupation, marital status):
Stanisław Puka, 21 years old, farmer – settler, no. 26/III.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was deported as a settler on 10 February 1940. Four militiamen came in the morning and gave us 30 minutes to pack our belongings and to load them along with the entire family onto a sleigh. The sleigh was so small that a family consisting of nine persons could hardly squeeze onto it, so we didn’t take anything except for what we were wearing. They transported us to the station. The loading took two days. They crammed 80 people into one wagon that could hold 40 persons [?]; the journey took two months. The temperatures fell to minus 40 degrees, and we received five kilograms of coal per day for the whole wagon. We were poorly fed, as we got 35 decagrams of bread per person. On the way they carried out 16 or 18 searches, which were very bothersome and meticulous; it was all such a devastating blow that several people took their own lives by hanging themselves. When we reached our destination, they told us that we would live there until we all perished.
They gave us one day to rest after the journey. We were driven to work in whatever we happened to be wearing. The temperatures fell to minus 52 degrees.
3. Name of the camp, prison or forced labor site:
Zanetsky hamlet, Priluzsky District, Komi ASSR.
4. Description of the camp, prison etc. (grounds, buildings, housing conditions, hygiene):
Swamps overgrown with pine forest. Mud huts 18 square meters large which had to house 90 people. Hygiene was below par, as there wasn’t any soap and the water was murky.
5. The composition of POWs, prisoners, exiles (nationality, category of crimes, intellectual and moral standing, mutual relations etc.):
The deportees included also Ukrainians – such as Jan Bezurecewicz and Wincenty Wojtas from tarnopolskie voivodeship – who tormented us Poles.
6. Life in the camp, prison, etc. (the course of an average day, working conditions, quotas and norms, wages, food, clothing, social and cultural life):
Wake up was at 4.00 a.m. After a breakfast of one piece of dry bread we were marched to work in the forest. We toiled all day, knee-deep in the mud, at felling trees. We worked 12 hours. In the evening I received a kilogram of bread for the next day and nothing more. Work quota per one person: seven cubic meters of wood, and they paid 80 kopecks for one meter. You could buy nothing more than a kilogram of bread per day. We had only the clothes which we had brought with us. There wasn’t any time for games or play as we had to work around the clock.
7. The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles (interrogation methods, torture and other forms of punishment, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
During interrogations they beat you with a pistol about the face and other body parts. There was also the punishment of seven days in complete darkness, without food. Mail was delivered once a year, so there wasn’t any contact with the country.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate (provide the surnames of those who perished):
There was no medical assistance. A few people were executed, for instance Władysław Puka, 52 years old, Władysław Buczyński, 42 years old, and Jan Buczyński, 29 years old. Apart from that, out of 1,250 people, 550 – all young people – died of typhoid fever.
Władysław Puka [this probably refers to Puchałek/Puchałka], 52 years old, was shot on 8 May in Syktyvkar. Until 1926, he was a member of the parliament, and later he was active in the people’s movement and was the chairman of the Settlers Union in podhajeckie and tarnopolskie voivodeships. The families who perished there were mainly settler families from tarnopolskie voivodeship, who originally came from the western parts of Lesser Poland.
9. Was there any possibility of getting in contact with one’s country and family?
Yes, we received mail once a year.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
I was released on 10 October 1941. I got to the Army without any help from the authorities. I travelled for five months by my own means, that is, without any assistance from the Russian authorities.
After the amnesty was proclaimed and we were issued documents, they forced us to sign an agreement under which their former laborers were obliged to continue working for them and were subject to Soviet laws. In view of this, half of the Polish families signed the agreement; they were forced to do so because they wouldn’t sell them bread.