1. Personal details (name, surname, rank, age, occupation, marital status):
Bombardier Natan Lauzerer, 28 years old, assistant trader, married.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 1 January 1940, they arrested me on the border near Jarosław, from where they returned me to the prison in Przemyśl.
3. Name of camp, prison, place of forced labor:
Berdychov prison, Kuybyshev (Samarlag) and Ustvim [Ustwimlag?] camps, Komi ASRR region.
4. Description of the camp, prison:
Camp surrounded by barbed wire (the zone), surrounded by ‘storks’ and dogs. Living in tents on bare boards, unfurnished. Lice, hunger and hard labor.
5. The composition of prisoners, prisoners, deportees:
There were about 5,000 people in the camp—1,600 Poles, the rest of the people [?] were Uzbeks, Russians, Chinese, Romanians, etc. [illegible] there were people of all categories, such as colonels, intelligentsia, bandits and so-called zhuls [crooks]. Intellectual life [illegible] and conditions.
6. Life in the camp, prison:
Daily meals: two soups without fat, rarely 500 grams of bread. In prison, cold, unheated cells, sleeping on bare concrete—wet, dirty. Lice in their thousands. A walk once per week, 10 minutes maximum. Torture, hunger [illegible] solitary confinement, beatings and constant searches at night [illegible] throughout these periods. There was no life in the gulag either; a barrack 30 meters by 6, a room for 400 people. 3-tier bunks, 50 cm of space for one person, old, dirty and torn clothes. There was no question of getting a straw mattress or blanket. To work on foot, far away—up to 10 km.
7. Conduct of the NKVD towards the Poles:
During an NKVD investigation, I was struck with a rubber truncheon across my back, for saying that it was they who had crossed the border into Poland illegally, not me. They threatened to shoot me, [they said] that I was a policeman, an officer, a confidant, that I had abused the communists in Poland, and finally that I was a German informer, that they had seen the Gestapo giving me money. They said that we would be beaten and tortured in Poland, that we would never see Poland again.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate:
Medical assistance was poor because there was no medication in prison. A certain Jakubiak from Bielsko—about 40 years old, tall—died in prison. The paramedic told us that he had died of hunger because he was all swollen. One young man, about 20 years old, died in terrible hunger during the transport from Przemyśl to Berdychov, his legs got frostbitten in the unheated freight wagons. In Berdychov, his legs were amputated and he died. In addition, the mortality rate in the gulag from [illegible], hunger and logging-related accidents was very high.
9. Was there any communication with homeland and family? If so, how was it?
In the prison and the gulag where I was staying, there was no communication or correspondence.
10. When were you released and how did you join the army?
I was released on 25 August 1941, and they wanted to send us forced laborers to work in free labor camps, although we really wanted to be sent to the Polish army. I escaped from Siberia to Tashkent, and after three months of wandering in hunger and cold I reached the army on 17 February 1942 in Kermine, Bukhara oblast.