SAUL AMSTERDAMSKI

Specification Content
Rank, name and surname of
the interviewee. [Illegibile] Amsterdamski Saul (imprisoned)
The expulsion of the civilian
population. Its course
and conditions.
Methods of interrogating
and torturing the arrestee
during investigation. Interrogations took place usually at night. Threats and intimidation were used to force a confession of spying for Germany. We were forced to sign twisted and falsified interview reports.
Court procedures, ruling
in absentia, ways of
delivering verdicts. (Full
texts of judgments are
particularly desirable). Court decisions were rendered at night and in absentia. The text of the judgment was more or less as follows: The Special court passes a sentence of five years in the corrective labor camp for spying and for crossing the border (we weren’t allowed to appeal against the verdict).
Cases of people who were
murdered during their march,
during their deportations,
during their stay in prison
or during their work as
forced laborers.
Life in the prisoner-of-war
camps.
Life in the forced labor camps
(camp organization and
work quotas). Living conditions: cold, damp and overcrowded barracks, water unfit for drinking. Work lasted for twelve hours before the outbreak of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, and for fourteen hours afterwards. Work quotas. The work quota involved carting 12 cubic meters of sand in a wheelbarrow at some 250 meters distance, and extracting 5 cubic meters of clay and carting it 150 meters. This quota was impossible to fill, and failure to meet the quota resulted in a reduction of food rations.
Life in prisons. A cell, seven by nine meters, housed 54 people. Food: boiled water in the morning (sometimes 20 grams of sugar), 600 grams of damp bread; dinner: a soup with fish and refilled water; supper: the same soup, 0.75 liters. During my eight months in prison [there was] one 30-minute walk on account of the renovation of our cell. The cell was infested with bedbugs.
Life in settlements and the
Soviet authorities’ attitude
towards the Polish population
sent into exile without
court judgments.
16 March 1943