JERZY NESTEL

Jerzy Michał Nestel, employee of the municipal fire brigade in Lwów, married.

I was taken as part of the mobilization in the areas occupied by the Bolsheviks in Poland. The mobilization took place on 22 April 1941. I was taken together with others, since more than 13,000 young people born between [19]17 and [19]22 of different religions, were [illegible].

They transported us to Voroshilovsk, where we were subject to a very hard recruiting process with Bolshevik discipline and covered by their political activities every once in a while. After three weeks, they rushed us for maneuvers to Lubny near Poltava. The life there was very miserable, as we received one loaf of bread for ten people. We spent all days on exercising in the field, sometimes even far into the night. We received soup thin like water three times a day, and once a week a two-course dinner, i.e., a soup, groats or lapsha [pasta] – as they used to call it.

On 22 June 1941, Germans bombed the camp. Two hours after the air raid, there was an alarm, and we were ordered to assemble. The regiment commander with the major rank read the Stalin’s order stating that Germans had attacked Russia and that a war between Russia and Germans had broken out. We were very glad to hear the news.

That evening they rushed us to the front on foot. Soldiers developed blisters on their feet, so that they couldn’t march any further. A sergeant or starshyna (similar to our boss) would push those unable to go further with their hands of rifle butts and say: “You Polish son of a bitch, you don’t want to go to the front, when we reach the front, they will get even with you.”

Meanwhile and on our way to the front, they [illegible] with the boys, saying: “You, Poles will never get back home and see your countrymen!” And so, we marched 15 kilometers outside Kiev. On the way, they didn’t give us anything to eat or drink, so when it rained during the day, at night, when nobody could see us, we would take in our helmets the rainwater from the traces left by the cannons and drink it. Within 24 hours, we [stopped] for five hours, we had no time to rest; there was the uniform call, weapon cleaning, dinner. And when were we supposed to sleep? We were so tired that nobody thought about food and we could hardly stand up.

When we came to the second front line outside Kiev (these were trenches for the reserves), everybody was dead on their feet, and fell asleep in the trenches filled with water. In the reserve trenches we spent two days and on the third day, they were supposed to send us to the first front line. [However], the Stalin’s order prevented them from doing so, stating that all Poles should be disarmed and sent back under escort. The order was fulfilled at once. They took everything from us, even the belts and puttees, and the NKVD men rushed us immediately to the botanical garden in Kiev, where we stayed five days. In the botanical garden, we also found out that an uprising had broken out in Lwów and that the Poles taken by the Bolsheviks on the Leningrad front had fought against them. They would also say: “ Vy, Polyaki, vy osobiy narod, tak kak Germantsy vas budem rasstrelivat v odinochku ipo 10 chelovek srazu ” [You, Poles, are a separate nation, and we would shoot you like Germans – one by one or in groups of ten]. [Because] we were rebelling and telling their soldiers how we had lived in Poland, they were very angry and were starving us.

After five days, they packed us into rail wagons and transported for nearly 15 days across almost the half of Russia in closed wagons. For six days, they didn’t give us anything – no bread, no water, so that soon everybody was lying on the bunks like dead due to hunger, thirst and exhaustion. After 15 days of circling, they transported us to Shostka and rushed us to wooden barracks. The starvation started again. The food was poor as we had to go six kilometers to the canteen twice a day to get some water with a few groats on its surface. There, we would also clear trees and mask a weapon factory.

After three weeks, they rushed us to a kolkhoz 15 kilometers away from Shostka. We worked there for four weeks, after which they returned us to Shostka, and from there, we went on foot and sometimes by train to Merefa near Kharkov. We worked there at the construction of fortifications and performed preparatory works for the defense of Kharkov, and when the works on this section were finished, they sent us to a village 18 kilometers away to work at the fortifications. Afterwards, they returned us to Merefa, but from the other side, where we finished our works relating to the fortifications of Kharkov.

At the beginning of October, Germans approached Kharkov, and thus the Bolsheviks, fearing that they would take us, started to rush us to Stalingrad, and on the way, they sent us to villagers to stay overnight, but in fact they wanted them to feed us. The food these people gave us was more or less what you can imagine, given that they had nothing to eat themselves. Some of them who were in the Bolshevik party told us: “You are the enemies of the Soviet Union and you want to be fed?” And pointing to us and to the wall, they said: “You should be placed against the wall and shot like dogs, because you sold our country.”

Being not aware of the Polish army being formed, on my further way outside Urazovo, I escaped with my two friends – Dziunek Podolski and Władek Teszluk from Lwów. I must admit that we wanted to go to the Germans and let ourselves get captured, but we didn’t succeed, because the NKVD authorities would breathe down our necks, so we had to go to the back of the Bolshevik troops, starving. This way, we covered 15 kilometers from the city, where a kulak gave us refuge, thus exposing herself to danger, and hid us in a dugout used to keep potatoes in winter. For 45 days, she fed us on everything she could, although she had nothing to eat. She told us to go to Rososz and report to voyenkomat. Willy-nilly, we had to go [illegible], but we made up a story that we had been sick at the Kharkov hospital and when Germans surrounded the city, we had escaped from the hospital.

When they noticed our physical condition, they agreed and presented us with a card for the peresylniy [transfer] point, where they gave us something to eat and, in the evening, took us to work in Omsk. In the meantime, we were very pleased to be informed about the forming of the Polish army in Omsk and made an appointment outside the city [illegible]. We drove through Kuybyshev, where we were waiting five days to find out that the Polish army was being formed in Totskoye and Buzuluk. Outside Totskoye, at the first station whose name I don’t remember, we escaped for the second time and reached Totskoye on foot, where we were welcomed by the captain of the Polish army, who sent us to the concentration point. The next day, we arrived at the recruiting site and were accepted. We were assigned to the 18th Infantry Regiment, to the 8th Company.