PIOTR ROWBUĆ

1. Personal data:

Sergeant Major Piotr Rowbuć, born in 1899, non-commissioned officer, married.

2. Methods of interrogating and torturing during investigation:

I was arrested by the NKVD authorities in Wilno on 14 June 1941. I was brought in a car to Nowa Wilejka, where I was put into a freight car along with other inmates. Under a strict escort of the NKVD, I was taken to Starobilsk, where my biography was written down and valuable objects were taken away from the other prisoners. On 24 June, after I’d been loaded into the car, I was transported to a labor camp in the northern Urals.

6. Life in forced labor camps, organization of the camps and work quotas:

a. Location and terrain. Sverdlovsk Oblast, Sosva district, the town of Gari, 1lagpunkt [labor camp], 10otdeleniye [department], 47kvartal [quarter]. Taiga and marshes, with large amounts of mosquitoes and midges, biting severely in the summer and fall season.

b. Housing conditions. I lived in a wooden barrack, slept on a wooden bunk with no mattresses or blankets, covering myself with my own work clothes, which were often soaking wet. The barrack was occupied by around 400 people. The heating was terrible. There were a lot of lice and bugs.

c. Food. I would get 400 grams of whole-wheat bread on average. There was soup twice a day, prepared from lettuce leaves and small, dirty potatoes. The soup was unsalted. We were often served soup with dissolved flour and no oil, almost watery.

d. Working conditions. I worked in the taiga, when there was really heavy snow, at temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius, during heavy rain, and in the spring thaws. The workplace was up to eight kilometers away. On the way, the Okhrana [guard department] functionaries would shoot at us, urging us to walk faster. They would also use antifascist and antireligious swearwords. During the seven months of labor in the camps I didn’t have a single day of rest.

e. Quotas. Here are a few examples: 1. cutting a tree from its trunk, sawing and laying down 4 – 8 cubic meters, as well as chopping off the branches and putting them in stacks; 2. cutting birches from the trunk, removing the bark, sawing them into one-meter pieces, and chopping the thicker ones and laying them down – the quota was from 2 to 5 meters.

f. Clothing. I didn’t get any underwear. At first I wore my own [clothes], then I received a worn out wadded jacket and extremely worn out wadded trousers. On my feet I wore low, rubber shoes with wadded uppers. During the thaws and when it rained they would fill with water, and in winter – with snow that melted into water. Apart from that, I was given shoes made from birch bark.

g. Composition of camp workers. Very diverse in terms of nationality. There were the so- called political criminals. Apart from Poles, there were also Lithuanians, Estonians and Jews. Former Governor of the Białostok and Wilno Voivodeships, Jaszczołt, Professor Kosakowski of Stefan Batory University in Wilno, Major Nagórny, eight former Lithuanian ministers and many Lithuanian functionaries (policemen) were kept in that camp. The total number of people in the camp was 688.

h. Hygienic and sanitary conditions. Dirty barracks, bugs, lice, rats. Doctors were Polish and Lithuanian. There was a major lack of medicine. Prisoners with body temperature above 38 degrees Celsius were excused from work.

i. Working hours. I worked in the forest from 6.00 a.m. until 8.00 p.m. with a one-hour lunch break, in winter – from 6.00 a.m. until 6.00 p.m. The hours remained the same after the outbreak of the Russian-German war, although more emphasis was put on the amount of completed work.

j. Entertainment and cultural life. No radio; the newspapers Prawda and Izwiestia were also hard to get.

k. Communication with the home country. Sending correspondence was prohibited.

l. Regulatory authorities’ attitude toward Poles. Unfavorable. Among the abusive terms we were addressed by were the words “fascists” and “national enemy” – very insulting to our nation, severe, and demeaning to human dignity.

m. Remuneration. Throughout my entire work period, I received 21 rubles.

n. Communist propaganda. Didn’t exist.

o. Mortality in the camps. During my stay, that is seven months, 150 people died due to illness, but mostly due to exhaustion.