On 10 February 1940 at 4.00 a.m., three NKVD officers came to my house and demanded that I give up my guns. When I told them I didn’t have any, they started searching the house. They didn’t find any guns, but they told me that in half an hour I had to be ready to leave for the Kostopol train station – this took place in Berestowiec, Kostopol District, Wołyń Voivodeship. Along with my family, consisting of my wife and five children, I was taken to the station and sent to Kotlas, Arkhangelsk Oblast, in closed train cars, together with other families. When they unloaded us from the cars in Kotlas, the women and children were ordered to sit in sleighs. It was 2.00 p.m. and we traveled the whole night until 11.00 a.m., at 40 degrees below zero, to the village of Cisowaja. When we arrived, the small children of some mothers were already dead because they had frozen during the journey in the sleighs (I remember the name Jagiełka). On the following days, there were several funerals. Eight days after our arrival, we were sent to the woods to fell trees. We were not allowed to bring firewood with us and we had to carry it from a forest situated seven kilometers away. In the first days of April of that year, we, men fit for work, were taken away from our families to a sawmill situated 60 kilometers away, where we were ordered to mill railroad ties. A local resident named Jumchim and director Rupasow were in charge of the sawmill. Their aim was to finish us off as soon as possible, which they also told us openly (they lived in Kharitonovo). We were not allowed to visit our families to pick up clean underwear. At the beginning, we were given 800 grams of bread, and then 600 grams. In July of the same year, we were sent to meadows to work at haying. During those two months, we spent whole days standing in water which reached above the ankles, so many of our people developed foot diseases and a friend of mine died (his surname was Nockula). In autumn, when the haying was over, we were sent to work in the woods, 60 kilometers further. We were not allowed to visit our families. I worked there until February 1941. Those men who had families and small children were then allowed to work closer, so I got permission to rejoin my family. I continued working in the woods, but from time to time I was allowed to see my dear ones. Through all the time we worked, we were mercilessly cheated in terms of remuneration and some of the money we earned was spent for various other purposes, which we couldn’t prevent in any way. Then, the food rations were reduced to 400 grams of bread.
In September 1941, to our great joy, we received release certificates and we were informed that we were free. We learned that the Polish army was being formed in the USSR, in Kuybyshev and Totskoye, so we immediately went there with our families. I arrived in Kotlas by boat, by the Vychegda River. There, together with several other families, we chipped in to hire a train car and we went to Buzuluk, to the army’s headquarters. It was impossible to get any food on the way. After a few weeks’ journey, we arrived in Buzuluk, where we received decent warm food, some rusks, and Mondena milk for children from the Polish Red Cross. On the day after the arrival, we were sent to the south of Russia, in the same train cars, to Jalalabat Oblast, Lenin region, the Oktiabr kolkhoz. After nine weeks of traveling and starvation in the cars (plus terrible lice), we arrived at the above-mentioned kolkhoz. We suffered from hunger so great during the journey that even our children did not have anything in their mouths except for boiled water for three days. In our train car, only one child died from hunger (his surname was Kuś), but there were more dead children in other cars.
At the beginning, people were paid for the work in the kolkhoz with one lepyoshka weighing 400 grams. Children and old people unable to work were given 200 grams of flour, or rather bran, for which they had to pay.
At the end of January 1942, I was summoned by a draft board and on 12 February I received a draft card. When I was leaving home, I said goodbye to my wife and children for the last time. I was sure I would never see them again because they were already exhausted. Other people who died from starvation in that kolkhoz were a man named Barczak from Kostopol District, a woman named Jabłońska, and many others whose names I don’t remember.