1. I was sent from Lithuania to the USSR as an internee.
2. Personal data:
Wachtmeister Jan Pytlak, born in 1896, senior constable of the criminal investigation branch of the State Police, married, three children.
3. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 12 July 1940, the authorities of the Soviet NKVD took me from the internment camp in Wiłokowyszki, Lithuania, and deported me to the USSR. On 15 July 1940 I was incarcerated in the camp in Kozelsk. This camp was for politically dangerous persons.
On 15 May 1941, together with other privates, I was transported by train from Kozelsk to Murmansk, and on 22 May I was escorted on foot to a camp for zaklyuchennyy [prisoners] which was located 12 kilometers from Murmansk and which was named the Valley of Tears by the Poles. On 6 June, after we were issued padded jackets, I was transported by ship to the Kola Peninsula, and on 13 June I was unloaded into the open air. We were immediately driven to work at the quay, without any rest or food, and we toiled thus day and night until 30 June.
On that day I was escorted a dozen or so kilometers across the swamp to another labor camp on the Ponoy River, which was named the Valley of Death by the Poles.
On 13 July I was taken by ship from the Kola Peninsula to Arkhangelsk, where they announced to us that the war with Germany had broken out. On 15 July, after I had arrived in Arkhangelsk, I was placed in a camp. On 22 July I was transported by train to the station of Volodymyr, and on 27 July I was escorted on foot to Suzdal and placed in a camp.
On 24 August in Suzdal, I appeared before a draft board chaired by a colonel of the Polish Army, Sulik-Sosnowski, and on 4 September 1941, as a free Polish citizen under the command of Polish officers, I was assigned to the 5th Infantry Division, and on 8 September I arrived in a transport at Tatishchevo, where the Polish Army was.
We repeatedly asked the NKVD, what was our status at the camps? Were we internees? POWs? Prisoners? But they never gave us a definite answer, and in the Kola Peninsula they told us that everybody was treated equally there and that this place was our homeland, our home, our family – right up to our deaths. It follows that the verdicts were delivered in absentia.
5. Description of the camp, prison:
From among the above-named camps, Kozelsk and Suzdal were the most decent ones – in terms of food, living conditions, medical assistance and the level of hygiene. However, we had to sleep on bare boards, without straw.
6. The composition of prisoners of war, inmates, exiles:
There were up to 4,000 Poles in the camp in Kozelsk, but only officers, gendarmes, policemen, border guards, prison guards, and priests. They were of various ages, but mostly Polish. These people represented a high intellectual level and were of strong moral fiber, so the camp remained unbroken in spirit. We were able to keep our spirits up thanks to the devoted work of officers and priests; a choir and a musical ensemble were established at the camp and sports were also organized. A few Polish officers and privates from among those incarcerated at the camp broke and gave ear to the propaganda, becoming tools in the hands of the NKVD. I don’t remember their surnames.
7. Life in the camp, prison:
Life in the camp – both in Kozelsk and Suzdal – was bearable, but when we were transported by train and by ship, there was hunger, thirst, and lack of air and of space for relieving oneself. Eventually we had to create makeshift air inlets, as everything was boarded up and people grew weak and fainted. There were over 40 people in small cargo wagons, the doors were sealed, and all pleas to the NKVD and their boytsy [soldiers] to give us water were to no avail; what is more, they made fun of us.
At the Kola Peninsula, we had to work day and night without food or shelter; everyone dug a hole in the ground for himself in order to get some rest. There was no medical assistance.
The NKVD imposed such work quotas on us that nobody was able to meet them, as we were issued only up to 200 grams of bread and some soup per day. When on 29 June 1941, on St. Peter and St. Paul’s Day, we asked for a day off to wash our underwear, they refused and forced us to work the whole day without any food, and at 1.00 a.m. they organized a roll call, surrounded us with boytsy, threatened us with death and ordered that everyone take a sack of flour (weighing 100 kilograms) and carry it on his back from the quay to the top of a rocky mountain, a few hundred meters or so uphill. We were so exhausted that we were collapsing under the heavy sacks, and the boytsy beat those who couldn’t continue on with rifle butts.
As for food and the housing and working conditions at the Kola Peninsula, they were insupportable for everyone during the six months we spent there; it was a place of perdition for each of us Poles. In the camps in Kozelsk and Suzdal, the NKVD organized film screenings, but they showed us only propaganda pictures that were not much to our liking. Mutual relations were good, we warned one another and kept away from those who broke and who wanted to influence others, so that they couldn’t do so.
8. The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles:
The NKVD was hostile towards us Poles. The NKVD’s behavior doesn’t bear comparison with anything known to humanity at its present level of civilization. It was hard to believe – I myself found it difficult to acknowledge – that people could be as bestial as they proved to be.
During the entire period of my stay in the camp in Kozelsk, at various times of day and night, I would be summoned to the office, where they tried to make me – an investigative officer of the State Police – give them the surnames of informers etc. They threatened me with death and put me out in the cold in light clothes to make me rat on people who had helped the Polish authorities. The NKVD man showed me letters from my family and told me that if I said what he wanted me to say I would get the letter, and when I refused – he didn’t give it to me. They tried to stir up hatred for my colleagues in the camp, saying that they had informed on me and had claimed that I knew a lot about the informers; they promised to release me from the camp should I prove to be of use. Finally they told me that my family was no longer my family, that I was in their care and that I would never see my family again. There were a few cases of suicide and mental collapse – it was such behavior that led to it.
When we were marched somewhere and someone fainted, he was beaten with rifle butts and poked with bayonets by the NKVD boytsy, as happened on 27 July 1941 during our journey from Volodymyr to Suzdal: the sweltering heat, 40 kilometers to cover on foot, hunger and lack of water made us collapse on the road. They rifle-butted us and poked us with bayonets, and the officer who was the commandant of the escort would shoot with his revolver above the head of the weakened person. During transport by ship from the Kola Peninsula to Arkhangelsk, we didn’t receive any food or water, and when we made a request for bread and water, the officer ordered us to keep quiet or he would shoot. In Arkhangelsk, a few thousands of us were put in a small, fenced off camp, where we had to sleep and relieve ourselves in the same place. The feces from the toilet overflowed into the camp square, and they kept us there without food and water for two days, which resulted in the deaths of several young soldiers whose surnames I don’t remember. Many fell ill.
Communist propaganda was vigorously spread by the NKVD officers in Kozelsk. They claimed that no system other than the communist one could exist in other countries, and that the USSR would take control of the whole world. They claimed that capitalist states were not good for the nation as a whole but only for individuals, and gave Poland as an example, saying that capitalism was one of the factors that had led to Poland’s collapse. They spoke blasphemously about God, saying that there was no God, and forbade us to observe any religious practices. Information about Poland: the NKVD officers claimed that they had their people also in Poland, and that soon Warszawa would be taken over by the USSR, that Poland would never be restored and that we should stop thinking about the past and get used to their laws.
9. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate:
From among the above-described camps, real medical assistance was provided only in the Kozelsk camp and in Suzdal, but there was a lack of medicaments. It was Polish doctors who worked tirelessly to save the lives of Polish soldiers. I remember neither the number of the dead nor their surnames.
10. Was there any possibility of getting in contact with one’s country and family?
I didn’t have any contact with our country; I received only two postcards from my family throughout the entire time, although they had sent several dozen.
As for points 4 [description of the camp or prison] and 11 [when were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?], I have provided all pertinent information in point 3.
I would like to emphasize that everything that I have described above is nothing but the truth, but if I recollected and described every single fact, my account would take several volumes, not pages.
Place of stay, 13 March 1943