1. Personal details (name, surname, rank, field post number, age, occupation and marital status):
Volunteer Helena Rościszewska, 38 years old, married.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested at the Romanian border together with my husband and my three-year-old son. On 19 April 1940, we were brought to Kosovo and an investigation was conducted. After the interrogation I took my son to Kołomyja, and left him there with my friends. I came back to Kosovo with a militiaman. I was living in Kołomyja for several years [illegible].
3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
I was in jail in Pryluky, Odessa, and Kharkiv. From Kharkiv I was taken to the camp at Jaja, Novosibirsk Oblast.
4. Description of the camp, prison, etc. (grounds, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
It was quite clean in the jail in Pryluky, but in Odessa and in Kharkiv it was filthy. In Kharkiv there were many of us in one cell, 80 people in small cells. In the camp there were 700 Polish women. There were two wooden barracks, and 280 of us were living in one of them. It was quite clean. We slept on bunk beds, there were top and bottom bunks.
5. Composition of prisoners, captives, deportees (nationality, types of crime, intellectual and moral level, mutual relations, etc.):
There were 5,000 prisoners in the camp, 700 of them were taken from Poland, mainly they were Jews, but also Ukrainians. Crimes were very different: people were there for stealing, for speculations, for crossing borders and political reasons. The Polish women, who were intelligent, were trying to stick together and if possible even work together. Besides, there were many different sorts of people, a lot of prostitutes, there were also Russians – political prisoners, thieves and speculators.
6. Life in the camp, prison, etc. (the course of an average day, work conditions, quotas, remuneration, food, clothing, social and cultural life, etc.): We were working in two shifts in the sewing rooms with motorized sewing machines – 10 days, and then after 10 days, 10 nights. The work conditions in the cells were terrible: wooden buildings, little space, so the workers who were sewing by hand had to sit on the floor. The quotas were extortionate, so it was hard to meet them. The work started in the morning at 6 a.m., we were working until 12 p.m., and then at 12.30 p.m. we had to be at work again until 7 p.m. Breakfast: bread and hot water. The amount of bread depended on meeting our quotas: 50% – 300 grams, 75% – 500 grams, 100% – 700 grams. It was the same with lunch: 100% – soup and millet, everything without any fats. Our clothes were old, dirty and ragged.
7. The NKVD authorities’ attitude towards the Poles (interrogation methods, torture, punishments, communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
The NKVD authorities were ruthlessly severe with us. At work we were constantly rushed: faster! why didn’t you meet the quotas? They were threatening us: whoever didn’t meet the quota would be locked up in a punishment cell. It was a small, dark cell full of rats. There was only a bunk bed made of wooden boards, and you couldn’t take anything with you – you were put there only with your clothes on. I have never answered any political questions.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality (give the names of the dead):
You got sick leave only when you had a fever of 38 degrees Celsius. Medical care was very limited. They were only extracting teeth and giving us headache powders, apart from that there were no medical supplies. One woman and one man died, but I can’t remember their names.
9. What kind of contact, if any, was there with your family and country?
Contact with the country was very difficult, we could write once a month. I was writing every month, and during my nine-month stay in the camp I got only one postcard. We almost never received our letters.
10. When you were released and how did you get to the army?
I was released on 3 September 1941. I stayed in the same region, in a kolkhoz for five weeks, and then I left south for Nurota, 85 kilometers from Kermine. I was working there in a sewing room until February 1942. In February the 7th Division started to form itself. On 12 February I left for Kermine and wrote an application. On 16 February the commission accepted me and I joined the Army.