Volunteer (section leader) Jadwiga Buba, Headquarters Platoon of the Women’s Auxiliary Service, Staging Area Command, 35 years old, married, with two children. My husband is a Captain (professional officer) in the 80th Infantry Regiment in Słonim. He is currently in German captivity – Oflag IX B, barrack 18.
At six in the morning on 13 April 1940, four soldiers armed with rifles entered our flat, and ordered us to pack our belongings and leave within an hour. The children started crying, but the sight of their tears aggravated the beasts even more, and they began to shout at us. They drove us to the station, where we were loaded onto a cattle wagon, bringing the total of “passengers” up to 64. Hungry and cold, suffering terrible deprivation, we traveled for sixteen days to the Severo-Kazakhstanskaya Oblast in conditions such that even the most basic rules of hygiene could not be observed. During the journey three people fell ill with typhus. I do not know what happened to them next, for they were taken to hospital in Ufa and I never saw them again.
At Pietuchowo station they opened the wagons and ordered everyone out, but not to freedom, only for further transport. They took us to the village of Swiatoduchówka, some 120 km distant from Pietuchowo, and there we received passports allowing us to dwell in the Presnovsky District – but strictly within its borders. And so, forced to work on a continuous basis, we lived in the village for two whole years. There were eighteen families, mainly of settlers and members of the armed forces. We had no choice but to work, while the food was very poor: for dinner, each person would be given millet soup, and 600 grams of bread daily.
The attitude of the NKVD towards us was very hostile. The communist propaganda, although extremely well developed, didn’t bring about the results that the Bolsheviks had hoped for.
The was no medical assistance, people frequently fell ill with very serious ailments, however I do not recall anyone dying in our village.
Contact with the homeland was difficult, practically non-existent. Letters sent from Poland or elsewhere abroad hardly ever arrived, while those sent anywhere from the settlement were never received.
The living conditions were very bad. Two families – oftentimes intermixed with the Russian population – had to live in a single room, with farm animals to boot. We, for example, lived with a Russian family in one room, into which the housewife brought a calf when her cow calved.
There was no social life at all, for the Soviets didn’t allow us to even get together as neighbors and talk – the predsiedatiel [kolkhoz chairman] would be upon us immediately, threatening that if we did so ever again, he would have those guilty deported to an unknown destination.
And that is what happened to Mr Barancewicz and Mrs Michaluś, they were taken to Karaganda for forced labor. Mrs Michaluś was sent with her seven-year-old daughter to work on the railroad, and her health deteriorated rapidly, as did that of her child; she did not return after the amnesty.
I was released on 30 August 1941, while on 12 April 1942 I managed to get to the Polish Army and began working as a hospital nurse.