1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, occupation and civil status):
Senior Rifleman Kazimierz Busk, 23 years old, with no civilian occupation, unmarried. Field Post Office no. 137.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 5 December 1939, when I was crossing the Polish-Hungarian border near Wygoda, Stanisławów voivodeship.
I was arrested in a field by some Ukrainian militia. There were two of us, and we were being led by a Polish woman some 20–23 years old. They started shooting at us with their rifles, to which we responded with our pistols, however our situation was dire, for the militiamen were more numerous. We handed ourselves over [illegible], however first allowing our guide to escape; she was from Wełdzirz near Wygoda, district of Dolina. My companion was from Łódź, aged 26; his name is Leon Szyc. I was not imprisoned with him, for they took him earlier and I do not have any information concerning his fate.
I was sentenced in absentia to five years in a corrective labor camp. They would take us in groups of five to a separate cell and read out the sentences – five years of imprisonment on the basis of article 80/16, and order us to undersign. If you refused, the warden would sign for you.
I escaped from the camp, but was caught and tried in the village of Maloshuyka, district of Onega, on 25 December 1940. They gave me two more years, and so I ended up with seven.
The court and its proceedings were a complete sham.
3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
I was incarcerated at the prison in Dolina from 5 December 1939 until 8 February 1940, at the prison in Stanisławów from 8 February until 18 March 1940, at the prison in Berdyczów from 24 March until 20 August 1940, and finally at the Soroko-Obozerskii Corrective Forced Labor Camp in the Onezhsky District of Arkhangelsk Oblast.
4. Description of the camp, prison (grounds, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
The forced labor camp was located in the swampy taiga. Initially, we lived in unheated, leaky tents, while later they moved us to barracks made from thin planks, also unheated. The living conditions were very bad – we slept on pallets which were infested with bugs and lice, without any bed linen. Hygiene was abysmal. There were no washrooms, we were never given any soap or hot water, while the barrack walls were unwhitewashed. Filth and dilapidation wherever you looked. The lavatories were squalid.
5. Social composition of POWs, prisoners, deportees (nationality, category of crimes, intellectual and moral level, mutual relations, etc.):
The inmates were of various nationalities, with Poles forming the majority. Political prisoners were predominant, although there was a small percentage of criminals. In the main, the detainees were professional military men and representatives of the intelligentsia. Their moral level was satisfactory. Poles would cheer each other up, and provide their comrades with material assistance. A small number were pessimistic about the future. Mutual relations between Poles were correct.
6. Life in the camp, prison (the course of an average day, working conditions, quotas and norms, wages, food, clothing, social and cultural life, etc.):
The average day proceeded as follows: We would be woken up at five or six, and marched off to work between six and seven. We labored on the construction of a railroad (excavations, embankments, removing earth and stones on wheelbarrows, digging ditches in the muddy or frozen ground). Working conditions were very difficult. The norms were impossible to carry out, for example digging six cubic meters of earth in swampy land or three to four in the frozen ground, and six to eight in drier ground. Our monthly wages ranged from five to ten rubles. We would receive between 30 and 90 decagrams of food, depending on how much work we had performed. Breakfast – a thin soup with dumplings or kasha. Dinner was reserved for those who had fulfilled the quota. Supper – a thin soup with kasha. Clothes – the ones in which you had been arrested, while when these became worn through, you would receive some old rags. There was no social or cultural life, for we were overworked to the point of exhaustion, and in any case had no time.
7. Attitude of the authorities, NKVD towards Poles (methods of interrogation, torture, punishments, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
The authorities and the NKVD were consciously prejudiced against us Poles. It was sufficient to state that you were of Polish nationality to hear a torrent of abuse. During interrogations they used elaborate and exceptionally cruel methods of torture, for example forcing you to sit on the leg of an upturned stool. In the event of insubordination, you would be locked up in the punishment cell – a black hole – where you would have to survive on a reduced ration of 20 decagrams of bread and some water. Communist propaganda was omnipresent, and we were forced to attend mass-meetings during which the Soviets purposefully insulted our national feelings. Poland was portrayed very negatively.
Whenever possible, it was stressed that Poland was an abusive country. Opinions about both the former and present government were highly unfavorable. General Sikorski and the Polish Armed Forces were ridiculed, usually being called “Sikorski’s gang”.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate (provide the surnames of those who perished):
Medical care was practically non-existent. Even those were really ill would be forced to work. People would be sent to hospital only in the most serious cases, usually dying there. Amongst those who perished were public prosecutor Czemeryński from Lwów and Lieutenant Kowalski (his real surname was Bajan; he was the brother of a famous Polish flier).
On 8 October 1940 Second Lieutenant of the Reserve Kazimierz Drabik from the Lublin voivodeship, a land reclamation technician by profession, was shot dead for trying to escape from the camp.
9. Was it at all possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family? If yes, then what contacts were permitted?
It was possible to keep in touch, however letters frequently did not reach their addressees, or did so many months later. Letters and parcels were routinely censored and searched.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
I was released from the camp on 11 September 1941. The NKVD sent me to Kostanay in Kazakhstan, were the Polish Army was rumored to be forming, but after arriving there I didn’t find any Polish units. And so I decided to travel to Buzuluk, however along the way, in Orenburg, the Polish representative – Colonel [surname missing] – directed me to Tashkent, where Polish units were said to be forming. But there were no Polish units in Tashkent either, and the Polish delegate, Mr Kaźmierczak, redirected whole transports of Poles to Farab in the Karakalpak Republic.
Once there, we were loaded onto barges and taken to the islands of the Aral Sea, where because of the severe winter we had to wait until the beginning of spring in 1942. In March 1942, we left for the presumed destination of the Polish Army, however along the way our transport was directed to Persia, where I finally enlisted.
Official stamp, 5 March 1943