1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, occupation and marital status):
Senior Rifleman Mieczysław Rozmysłowicz, aged 21, a mechanical high school student, unmarried.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
28 June 1940 in Zambrów. I didn’t have a Soviet passport, I was suspected of wanting to cross the demarcation line and arrested together with my sister and my cousin.
3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
Initially kept in prison in Białystok, later taken away as a prisoner with a five-year sentence to the Arkhangelsk Oblast, Yertsevo otdeleniye [department], to the “Alexeyevka II” lagpunkt [labor camp] and then to the penal camp “Alexeyevka I”.
4. Description of the camp, prison, etc. (grounds, buildings, housing conditions, hygiene):
My work included logging the taiga, rooting out and loading the railcars. Failing to fulfill the quota, I received very little amounts of bad food. I was always hungry, soaked and [illegible]. We lived in very cold barracks, where we had simply nowhere to sleep: dirt, insects, diseases.
5. Composition of POWs, prisoners, exiles (nationality, category of crimes, intellectual and moral standing, mutual relations, etc.)
One half of the people in the camp were Russian criminals and the other half were Polish political prisoners. We didn’t maintain any relations with the Russians, even though they were our superiors. There were about 200 of us. There were people from different classes and age groups, but everyone thought about the same thing: returning to Poland. We were a united group – we suffered together, to the surprise of all the Russian cellmates.
6. Life in the camp, prison, etc. (daily routine, working conditions, work quotas, remuneration, food, clothes, social and cultural life, etc.):
Life in prison was the worst nightmare. There were 90 of us crowded into a cell [designed] for 20. We were infested with lice, tormented by hunger, inaction, and – just as severely – the interrogations. We were awaiting salvation in the form of being sent to the labor camps, where our living conditions were supposed to get better, according to the NKVD. Then there was the arduous transport, full of harassment and torture.
In the camp we were employed to work right away. For the first four days, 50 percent [illegible] were designated to log the forest. There were very severe frosts and we had no warm clothes. We went to work at 5.00 a.m. and worked until 6.00 p.m. with no lunch. After that, we were escorted to the camp, where – according to three categories – we received food and bread adequate to our fulfilled quotas. Us Poles, we were unable to fill the quota most of the time and that’s why we were underprivileged in all respects. We had days off two or three times per month. But even that was abandoned after the outbreak of the [German- Soviet] war.
Obviously, in such conditions, any form of cultural life was out of the question, but the social bonds were growing. There were some deserters, too; however, we excluded them from our group.
7. The NKVD’s attitude toward Poles (interrogation methods, tortures and other forms of punishment, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
The NKVD authorities had the worst attitude toward Poles. Interrogations were performed by several NKVD officers – some of them forced statements by beating, others would promise things, use tricks or incarcerate the prisoners in the punishment cell. I didn’t come into contact with communist propaganda. That was a result of my behavior – my interrogation always ended in the punishment cell. They tried to humiliate Poland by humiliating our authorities. It was always emphasized that Poland was gone forever.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate (give the names of the deceased):
Medical assistance consisted of an outpatient clinic and a hospital. Only those seriously ill, whose disease could be “tangibly” diagnosed, were taken care of. Internal diseases were not acknowledged. The medical assistance encountered obstacles such as a lack of means and hygiene, as well as the authorities’ orders (the head of the camp determined the [admissible] number of ill people who would be exempt from work). The doctors were mostly Russian prisoners.
9. What, if any, was your contact with your home country and your family?
I received letters from my relatives from Poland, from Nowogródek Voivodeship. Two letters from my father – a prisoner in some camp in Karaganda, and a few letters from my mother – on exile in Kazakhstan.
10. When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?
I was released after three strikes and three hunger strikes, on 17 October 1941. I traveled for three months to get to my family in Kazakhstan (Kostanay Oblast). After spending three months there, I left for Guzar, having received a ticket to the Polish agency in Akmolinsk (via wojenkomat [army drafting committee]). I joined the army on 5 May 1942.