Corporal of the Reserve Jan Furman, 30 years old, farmer, bachelor.
I was arrested on 26 February 1941 at 11.30 p.m. in the village of Dźwinogór, Buczacz district, on charges of anti-kolkhoz propaganda activities. Five militiamen and a civilian came to arrest me. They took me to jail in Buczacz, and then to Czortków.
Prison life was as follows: podjom [waking up] at 5.00 a.m., breakfast at 6.00 a.m. – half a liter of soup (hot water and up to ten grains) – lunch at noon, the same as breakfast; a piece of bread (400 grams) at 3.00 p.m. and supper at 6.00 p.m. – as above. We went for a walk (5 minutes) to the prison courtyard, but not every day. Our cell was small – 15 by 5 meters, but there were from 70 to 90 prisoners in it. The smell was awful due to faulty sewers. The prisoners had to be absolutely silent.
Social composition of the prisoners: about 50 percent were Poles, 40 percent were Ukrainians, 10 percent were Jews. Intellectual and moral standing: 50 percent were countrymen, 50 percent were people with higher education or secondary school graduates. High moral standing. Various crimes: from political campaigning to [illegible] illegal (counter-revolutionaries) [illegible].
The sanitary conditions were extremely bad.
A doctor visited once a week, but there were no medications.
On 29 June 1941 I was transferred to the prison in Gorky. The journey was very tough. There were 115 people in a freight car with a capacity of 15 tons. During the journey, seven people in my car died. I do not know their names because they had been kept in a different cell.
In the neighboring car, 35 people died during the journey. The deaths were caused by the lack of air and water (we were given two buckets of water per day for the whole car), and by the high temperatures.
From the prison in Gorky I was transferred to the camp in Sukhobyezvodnoye, which was in a forest. The barracks were made of wood, the prisoners were of different nationalities: Russians – 90 percent, the rest: Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Belarusians (Soviet citizens), Jews and ourselves – five Poles. Our day began with waking up at 5.00 a.m. Then we had breakfast and marched off into the forest situated 12 km from the camp. If you wanted to receive food from the third cauldron (the best), you had to achieve 150 or 200 percent of the quota. In order to meet 100 percent of the quota, you had to cut with a saw and arrange 4 m3 of birch. We received no clothes, there was no cultural life.
The only medical assistance available was that if you were ill, you were granted one, two, or three days of sick leave.
I was released on 21 September 1941 and I went to Buzuluk, but I was sent to Totskoye. On 15 October 1941, I was enlisted into the Polish Army in Totskoye.
Place of stay, 7 March 1943