1. Personal data:
Platoon Sergeant of the Reserve Kazimierz Bartoszko, a pensioned officer of the tax inspection service, married.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 20 September 1939, I was arrested in the township of Wilejka Powiatowa, Wilno voivodeship, and charged with espionage (as a former soldier of the Polish Legions), membership of the Polish partisans, and being an enemy of the Soviet nation.
3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
I was imprisoned in the township of Wilejka Powiatowa and in Kazan in the USSR.
4. Description of the camp, prison:
As regards the prison in the township of Wilejka Powiatowa in the Wilno voivodeship: before the War, this facility housed not more than 180 people, while following the Soviet invasion the cells that were formerly used for solitary confinement contained as many as eighteen people each; the general halls, which – again – in prewar times held 12 or 16 persons, now housed 48 or even 56. It was the same in Kazan, where we were detained in a former Russian monastery that had been converted into a prison by the Bolsheviks. There were 50 of us and more to a cell, and so we slept like herrings in a barrel; medical care was practically non-existent. In prison, the only people who were admitted to the infirmary were those who were to die in a few days, or on the evening of the present.
5. Social composition of POWs, prisoners, deportees:
Initially, the prison in Wilejka housed Polish Army volunteers, civil servants and teachers, although their numbers varied, for some would be taken away in the night, while others brought in, so that towards the end of my stay there was a mix of people from different ethnic groups and different religious backgrounds. In the main, mutual relations were friendly, although there would be occasional fights, for example when new prisoners – backward Bolsheviks – arrived. The majority of inmates were Polish soldiers who had escaped from forced agricultural labor in Eastern Prussia to the Polish lands occupied by the Soviets. We prayed together, and I must say that many prisoners of different nationalities readily joined in our supplications, which were recited in Polish.
7. Attitude of the authorities, NKVD towards Poles:
As regards the NKVD: immediately upon being arrested, you would be interrogated for 18 or 48 hours, and thereafter locked up in a cellar in which you could not lie down, for the cement floor was cold, and the room completely dark. Interrogations were usually held at night, between 6.00 p.m. and 0.00 a.m., sometimes lasting until daybreak. For example, when I was arrested they ordered me to stand by the wall on my toes for twelve hours, but since I was unable to do so, they kicked me in my stomach with their boot heels. As a result, they perforated the lower part of my stomach and I presently suffer from hernia. We did not receive newspapers, while if someone had any printed materials, they would be confiscated immediately. Regarding Poland, they would have the following to say to prisoners: – You shall rot in prison, you Polish dog.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate:
It is difficult to say anything about the mortality rate, for we did not know whether people had died or been killed, especially as the only means of communication available to us was knocking on the wall in Morse code, informing that so and so had died or been taken away at 0.00 a.m. I remember only a few of the surnames that I then knew – that of Bielewicz, a student at the Polish secondary school in Wilejka; of Tarasiewicz, a student at the same school; of Jan Jankiewicz, the son of a watchmaker from Wilejka; and of Wasilewski, a technician from Oszmiana.
9. Was it at all possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family? If yes, then what contacts were permitted?
I had no contact with either the home country or my family, for I was deprived of any means of notifying my family and requesting their material assistance.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
I was released from prison on 4 September 1941 in order to work as a forced laborer in the Altai Krai, however along the way I was informed that a Polish Army was being formed in Buzuluk, and so I proceeded directly there and quickly enlisted.
9 September 1941