1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, occupation and civil status):
Leon Burdanowicz [illegible], Field Post Office no. 163, born in 1919, a farmer by occupation, unmarried.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 10 February 1940, I was deported to a settlement together with my family from the village of Sinków, Tarnopol voivodeship, district of Radziechów.
3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
The Kopytowo kolkhoz, Wilicigowska Oblast, Solvychegodsk region.
4. Description of the camp, prison, etc. (grounds, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
A poor kolkhoz, located on swampy ground. Our living quarters were barracks – infested with vermin, each housing five hundred people.
5. Social composition of POWs, prisoners, deportees (nationality, category of crimes, intellectual and moral level, mutual relations, etc.):
Only Poles, 4,000 people.
6. Life in the camp, prison, etc. (the course of an average day, working conditions, quotas and norms, wages, food, clothing, mutual relations, cultural life, etc.):
Life was bad. When you failed to carry out the norm, you received no food. I worked on the river floating logs; the quota for eight men was one hundred raft planks. Our remuneration was 15 rubles and the right to purchase food and clothes. Mutual relations: due to the fact that we were surrounded by Soviet citizens, there was mutual hatred.
7. Attitude of the authorities, NKVD towards Poles (methods of interrogation, torture, punishments, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
We were treated badly. There was intensive communist propaganda.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate (provide the surnames of those who perished):
There was no medical assistance. Stefania Burdanowicz, Czesława Dubel, Tadeusz Dubel and many others died.
9. Was it at all possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family? If yes, then what contacts were permitted?
We were able to write and receive letters.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish army?
I was released on 5 January 1942 and summoned to the recruitment committee in Kitab. I enlisted in the Polish army in Guzar on 8 February 1942.