Str. mł. [?] of the Polish Army, Andrzej Smagur, born in 1901, cobbler, farmer, Polish nationality.
On 2 September 1940, I was arrested in the village of Batuki, Wołożyn district, and taken to Wołożyn, where I was staying for six months. Interrogation took place six times, always at night. One day they locked me in detention, naked, only in underpants; I stayed there for six days the first time, and for seven days the second time. The food at detention was 100 grams of bread and water. A normal prisoner’s meal was a rare soup twice a day, similar to a slop, and 300 grams of bread.
From Wołożyn, they took us north, to the White Sea, to the Karelo-Finnish [republic] town. We were staying there in the stable from January 1941. In the winter, we were taking away snow and frozen soil chopped with metal rods on wheelbarrows, for 14 hours a day. The quota was to take away 200 wheelbarrows of snow, and dig out two and a half meters of soil and take it out with wheelbarrows. The food was poor: 300 grams of raw bread and four liters of soup for ten people twice a day. We were working at frosts up to 50 degrees without gloves, and you could say that we were almost naked, because the NKVD said that we Poles must go barefoot and naked, because this is what we deserved.
There were 35 people in my brigade; 28 of them died of hunger and cold, and seven survived. There was no medical care or hygiene. The prison environment varied, Poles were the majority. Voting was obligatory, if someone did not want to vote, he was forced to do so by the Soviet authorities.
From Karelo-Finnish [republic] we left for Kotlas [Arkhangelsk Oblast] in June 1941, where I was staying until the release after the amnesty announcement on 29 August. In November of this year, I joined the Polish Army in Buzuluk [a city in the European part of the USSR, located by the Samara River].