1. Personal data:
Platoon Sergeant Eliasz Szapiro, 29 years old, lab technician and chemist, bachelor; Paiforce no. 138.
2. Date and circumstances of the arrest:
On 28 October 1939, I returned from German captivity (Mińsk Mazowiecki). I was arrested on 30 October, having spent two days in Nowogródek. How was I arrested? On the night of 29 October, the house was surrounded by soldiers and the militia. Three NKVD officers entered the apartment and demanded we give up our weapons. We didn’t have any, so they started searching, or rather vandalizing, the apartment; they didn’t even spare the stoves or the floor. After they finished, they told me to get dressed and took me away, allegedly only to write a search report. In fact, they took me straight to prison.
3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
I spent three months in the prison in Nowogródek and five months in the fortress in Brześć nad Bugiem. Then, I was deported to a forced labor camp in Samarlag Bezimianka near Kuybyshev.
4. Description of the camp, prison:
The prison in Nowogródek was just as it had been under Polish rule; the only difference: windows were tightly barred and the cells were terribly overcrowded. In a cell that would normally fit one or two people, there were 10–15. The fortress in Brześć nad Bugiem had already been adapted to reflect the Soviet style: water and heating facilities had been removed; there were no beds and instead there were bunks made of boards; huts had been built in the square so that the prisoners would walk inside them, without communicating with others. The housing conditions were terrible. No soap, no underwear, no baths. There was no medical assistance at all. Labor camp: we were brought to an empty field, 25 km from the Bezymyanka station, and it was supposed to be the camp. The area was immediately fenced with wires and we started [illegible] the snow, which was over half a meter high. We set up canvas tents and that was how the camp was built. We spent over a month there without warm meals; there were no warm clothes or shoes. They made us do hard earth works: the work quotas were high and the ground was frozen. No medical care, no water, etc.
5. Social composition of POWs, prisoners, deportees (nationality, categories of crimes, mutual relations):
The majority of the prisoners were military men, settlers, police officers, rich farmers and merchants. They were mostly Polish, of different religions. About 20 percent were Belarusians and Ukrainians. Mostly political criminals or exploited workers. It should be pointed out that mutual relations between Poles, Belarusians and Ukrainians were very hostile. The Belarusians and Ukrainians never missed a chance to abuse the Polish people.
6. Life in the camp, prison, etc.:
In the prison: we woke up at 6.00 a.m., had breakfast at 6.30 (400 grams of [bread], half a liter of warm water); at 12.00 – dinner (3/4 liter of soup, that is, water with rotten cabbage or beets); at 4 p.m. – supper (half a liter of warm water); at 6 p.m. – curfew. It should be mentioned that during the day, we were not allowed to walk around the cell or talk loudly, or to lie down, which had a terrible effect on people. A day in the labor camp: we woke up at 3.00 a.m., at 4.00 a.m. we had breakfast (from 700 to 250 grams of bread, half a liter of millet soup), about 5.00 a.m. we left for work. (When the people were marching off, they were treated brutally; it happened very often that some of them never returned from work because they had been murdered by the convoy.) Around 6.00 p.m. we returned from work and had dinner (usually it was soup cooked with stinky fish plus a quarter liter of groats). It should be pointed out that if the work quotas were not met, the meals and treatment got even worse. The working conditions were very difficult due to hunger and cold. The work quotas were simply too high (each man had to dig up five cubic meters of dirt per day). We received a minimum remuneration (5 to 20 rubles a month), but usually they gave us nothing. Each man had to break and lay out four cubic meters of stone. The relations with USSR prisoners were generally quite good, but the relations with Belarusians and Ukrainians were hostile. The general conditions were very severe due to the lack of medical assistance, food, shoes, and clothing.
7. Attitude of the authorities, the NKVD, towards Poles:
As for the attitude of the authorities, the NKVD, and the method of interrogation, I will provide a few facts. During the interrogation, they used filthy words, beat prisoners in the face, knocked their teeth out, burned their heels, threatened to shoot them and starved them for several days, with their hands and feet chained, in prison dungeons, without clothes, that is, naked. They also used other hideous methods. The anti-Polish propaganda was immense. They assured us that Poland would never exist again, etc.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality:
Medical assistance was minimal. There were no doctors, so their duties were performed mostly by paramedics. The hospitals were dirty, the sick received no care, the mortality was quite high. I’m providing the name of a prisoner who died in my presence: Antoni Noskowicz, inspector of prisons, resident in Nowogródek, the village of Bracianka.
9. Was it possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family? If yes, what contacts were permitted?
It was possible to communicate with the home country, but there were great difficulties because all letters were strictly controlled.
10. When were you released and how did you join the army?
I was released from the camp on 14 September 1941, and I went to see my parents, who had been deported to the KSSR, since I had their address. In accordance with an order of the army commander in the USSR, who summoned all non-commissioned officers who had actively participated in the 1939 campaign to appear in the army’s headquarters, I went there and joined the 19th Infantry Regiment.
11. Court procedures, ruling in absentia, ways of delivering verdicts.
Generally, the court did not carry out interrogations because everything was done without the defendant’s knowledge. Delivering verdicts – as usual, it was done at night. I was told to step outside the cell (the fortress in Brześć nad Bugiem) and enter the corridor, where I saw a woman accompanied by the NKVD; she read out the verdict: ten years of forced labor.
The content of the verdict: at a meeting, the Special Council found you guilty based on Article 74 (counter-revolution) and sentenced you to ten years of forced labor.
Temporary quarters, 16 March 1943