1. [Personal data:]
Corporal Rudolf Schmidt, born on 17 March 1912, tailor from Jarosław, married, one child.
2. [Date and circumstances of arrest:]
I was arrested on 17 December 1939 in Jarosław, at the border crossing on the San River.
3. [Name of the camp:]
Arkhangelsk Oblast [province], NKVD’s 40th camp, 29th colony.
4. [Description of the camp:]
During the first days of my arrest after crossing the border, I was held in the house of Witold Czartoryski in Sanok. They locked me up, soaked, in a cold room for an hour. I was held for two days in the cold and without food; after two days, I was moved to prison in Sieniawa and I stayed there until 21 December, also in the cold and without food. After this torment, I was taken to prison in Przemyśl, on 23 December. When I came to the cell, I saw there were a lot of prisoners and prisoners of war, women, and children. Despair overwhelmed me, but nothing could have been done about it. I stayed in Przemyśl from 21 December 1939 to 17 February 1940. It was very difficult to survive. Every day they gave us 20 decagrams [200 grams] of bread and a small pot of hot water for breakfast, and 20 decagrams of bread and a bit of soup with raw horse lungs and swedes for dinner. This is what life was like in the prison in Przemyśl. Lice were everywhere, even on the walls. In a small cell there were 60 to 80 of us, we slept on the ground, one on top of the other; when someone needed to go to the toilet, he had to walk on the heads of others, and everything was leaking from this toilet to the ground; they ignored our requests for it to be emptied. Then, there was an epidemic outbreak and they took a lot of people to the hospital. When there was a package from home for someone, the NKVD opened it, picked what they liked and took it, all while we were dropping like flies from hunger.
On 17 March 1940, they took some of us out of prison, loaded us aboard cold freight cars, and transported us to Russia. On the way we were given selołki [?] and a bucket of water per car of 36 people, where everyone was thirsty and hungry. If someone asked for water or food, he was taken out of the car and beaten or handcuffed.
When we arrived in Kharkiv, we stayed there for a few days and were divided into camps for earthworks. I was sentenced to five years of labor in a camp. From Kharkiv, we were taken to Nikolayev [Mykolaiv] and kept there for eight months, and then to the camp, where I went through hard times. The working standard was to dig the ground 360 [illegible] a day, and later it reached as high as 500 [?]. If somebody failed to meet the standard, they would put him in the punishment cell, undress him, leaving only his shirt on, and give him no food. The next day they would rush him to work hungry and almost naked. The conditions were very difficult, we slept on bare bunks, in the same clothes we wore all the time.
I was released on 14 March 1942. I was beaten and starved because I didn’t want to work, but I survived. I report the death of: the constable, W. Drabik, who was shot in the camp; Wolski from Stanisławów; Stanisław Kosielski; and Warrant Officer Grudny [?].
11 February 1943.