Danuta Ogniewska, 31 years old, doctor, unmarried, commandant of the company.
Deported along with her family on 13 April 1940. She was deported by administrative decision to Kazakhstan, Kostanay Region, and settled 180 kilometers from the train station. The NKVD didn’t explain the reason for the deportation.
We lived with several other Polish families in the Russian-Ukrainian village. The housing and sanitary conditions were very bad. I worked as a doctor, others worked in the kolkhozes or at cutting trees. There was very little pay for the work. Those who were working in the kolkhoz didn’t get paid at all. The NKVD’s attitude towards us [was] hostile, they treated us as if we were the worst kind of people - they didn’t sell us anything in the shops, they forced us to work very hard, regardless of age – my parents, for instance, who we were both 70 years old. The communist propaganda was very hostile towards anything that was Polish. Poland had been erased from the history – there was no Poland and never would be.
Medical assistance: I was the only doctor within 90 kilometers. There was a little hospital with 25 beds, and there were hardly any medicines or equipment. The death rate was low among Polish People.
We had contact with the country until the German-Russian war broke out.
After the amnesty, as a Polish citizen I received a call-up from the commander of the 6th Infantry Division to present myself in Tock [Totskoye]. Despite all the difficulties that the NKVD were making for us, in November 1941 I joined the 6ID in Tock [Totskoye] as a doctor.