Platoon Leader Stanisław Banaś, born in 1899, farmer, Roman Catholic, resident of the military settlement of Łobaczówka, Horchów district; wife Zofia born in 1900; daughters: Maria, born in 1924, Stanisława, 1926, Zofia, 1928, Genowefa, 1930; sons: Mieczysław, 1935, and Henryk, 1938. All residents of Łobaczówka.
On 10 February 1940, at 3.00 a.m., we were woken up by someone screaming “ otkroy”, and when we opened the door we heard “ ruki vverkh” [hands up] and we were all arrested on the spot. I was knocked to the floor with my face to the wall, a guard stood over me and I heard the words “davay broy” [illegible]. I said that I didn’t have any weapons; the house was thoroughly searched. My wife and children were told: you have 30 minutes to get ready and then you go. We were allowed to take linens, clothes, some food, kitchen utensils, a saw, an ax and a shovel. Then my wife and children began to weep. They didn’t want to leave the house [illegible fragment] but it didn’t help any, as an NKVD senior lieutenant and his NKVD friends dragged my wife and children screaming from the house, placed them on a sleigh and transported them to [illegible] township in the Łubaczówka settlement.
When we and our families had all been arrested, all 81 of us were taken to the train station in [illegible] and locked inside goods wagons, in which holes had been drilled for us so we could take care of our bodily needs, and our things were loaded onto baggage wagons. We remained at the station for three days, surrounded with guard posts of the Soviet soldiers who had escorted us. Following our deportation, there were huge dance parties and much carousing in the settlements. We set off on 13 [February], and at the border we said a final farewell to our beloved homeland: we sang together “Poland Is Not Yet Lost” and shed tears. We passed Shepetivka, Oryol, Gorky, Kotlas, and went to Koryazhma [?]. The journey lasted for three weeks, and we received some groats twice and one piece of black bread per person, also twice. There were twenty souls in the wagon. During 24 hours, only two people at a time were let out once from the wagon [illegible], and the wagon was promptly locked. On the way, Dymkówna was hit by the escort with a wooden [illegible], following which she died. After our arrival at the station we were transported in sleighs to the barracks, and from there we were transported to various hamlets. My family and I were taken to Lednia [?], the Rajski [?] region, Arkhangelsk Oblast, situated 250 kilometers from Koryazhma. We went by sleigh, and the temperature was 40 degrees below zero. I received two sleighs [illegible] I loaded my wife and six children, arranged [illegible] because the sleigh was small, and on the second sleigh I loaded things [illegible], but it turned out then – and also later – that a great many things had already been lost, even whole wagons.
The journey by sleigh took six days, and we didn’t receive any food on the way. On 10 March 1940 we arrived at the site barely alive, extremely exhausted.
And then the real torment began. We were placed in barracks so cold that water froze solid in them. For 18 months we were sold 80 decagrams of bread per laborer and 20 decagrams per child a day. We couldn’t buy anything in the canteen because our remuneration was so low that we couldn’t earn one [slab of] black bread, and we lived on bread and black unsweetened coffee. My daughter and I worked [illegible] quotas, but I earned up to 50 rubles per 15 days, and my daughter up to 35 rubles. My wife worked in the hamlet, where she earned up to 20 rubles per 15 days, so the three of us earned 200 rubles per month; black bread cost a ruble and [illegible] kopecks per kilogram, and white two rubles twenty kopecks. In addition, there were other things such as soap, groats, salt, flour, and matches, so approx. [illegible] wasn’t enough even for a serving of groats. The work was very hard, as the felling site was situated nine kilometers down the river and we had to carry the logs on our backs and pile them [illegible] on the bank, so they would be ready for rafting. The Poles were so exhausted with hunger, cold, and work that epidemics broke out. [Illegible] for being five minutes late, we were immediately tried in court: first they would deduct 25 percent of our remuneration, the second time – 50 percent, and the third [illegible]. After eleven months of work in the woods, my daughter was transferred to the canteen. It was a hard work, because she had to work 19 hours a day. Two months after that she was burned all over as the result of an exploding hermetically sealed butter churn [?]. She fell ill due to poor hospital care, and from applying margarine to the burned flesh; she subsequently developed an infection and died after eighteen days of torment. In the 13th month I began to have problems with my heart and kidneys, and I lay for three months all puffed up. My wife, also exhausted, fell ill all the time, and then we sank deeper into misery. There was nowhere to turn to for help, because our families lived in the German-controlled territories. In order to save our lives we sold the rest of our clothes and [illegible].
As for persecution by the NKVD, every single day we heard: Zabyt o Polshe [forget about Poland]; that bandit Sikorski; tu podochnyees [you’ll die here]. It was forbidden [illegible] with the exception of the family, it was forbidden to sing a song. When the commandant came to me at Easter time and noticed a little cross on the Easter lamb, he threw it to the floor.
As for medical care, it was very poor. Those who didn’t run a temperature of 40 degrees were not [illegible] and were forced to work. Many people died in our hamlet, especially children. I cannot provide an exact number.
On 21 September 1941 I was released, and after strenuous efforts – I had to go to the regional commandant – my family and I were issued udostoverenie [certificates of release] and on 22 September we set off for Chkalov. We didn’t receive anything for the journey. My wife sold our pillows, bought half a meter [50 kilograms] of potatoes, and the remaining money was to buy us passage on the ship that was leaving for Kotlas. They didn’t want to let us on the ship. In Kotlas we needed money for train tickets. We sold our things and bought tickets for a goods wagon that cost us 480 rubles; we had 10 rubles left for a three-month journey. It was already 20 December when we arrived in Kazan [?], Bukharan Oblast. I shall skip the description of this journey; it is obvious what a journey of seven people without any food can look like. On our way back from the Aral Sea I buried my son, Mieczysław, at the riverbank. Finally we were taken back to Kazan. I would like to mention that Amu Darya claimed many lives. Finally in Kazan they unloaded us in the field by the station, and we lay there for 14 days without any assistance or [illegible]. Two weeks later we made it to the Maxim Gorky kolkhoz, where they began to issue us 200 grams of scraps per person; we went with the scraps to the NKVD, rajispolkom [executive committee] woyenkomat [army drafting committee], and only the superintendent and [illegible] went to Bukhara to show what we were getting to eat, but it was to no avail. Our people also made efforts to make them sell us bread, but they failed. In the end we had to buy oil cakes and so we lived [illegible]. The squalor led to the outbreak of typhoid fever, which swept the area and decimated the Poles such that corpses were lying in the road [illegible]. Then my wife and daughter fell ill. I took them to the hospital, but they weren’t admitted. I took them back, but on the third day my wife and daughter lost consciousness. I take them to the hospital for a second time, but this time I don’t ask, I just carry them in and lay them on the floor. Three days later my wife died, but my daughter was still unconscious. The funeral was organized in the following way: I asked a friend of mine for help, and we took the body on a stretcher and carried it to the cemetery, where we wrapped it in ragged clothes and buried it without a coffin, worse than a dog. I return to the kolkhoz only to learn that my remaining three children had also fallen ill. I have to emphasize that at the time I was running a temperature of 40 degrees, as I suffered from typhoid fever. It was exactly when I was suffering from typhoid fever that I was admitted into the army by a Soviet board in Kazan. A few days later I took the three children to the hospital and brought the oldest one back to the kolkhoz. I wanted to stay in the hospital myself, but unlike the children, I wasn’t admitted due to the lack of space. I arrive at the kolkhoz and see that I will last a few days more, and the first transport to the army leaves on 12 February. And so I ask the child what to do: end my days in the kolkhoz or leave. And she says, “Go, daddy”. But how am I to leave that child, so weak and destitute? And I killed a cat for her, because there was nothing else, and I took off my last pair of shoes and left them for my daughter. Meanwhile [illegible], barefoot, ragged, I went to the station. Two friends walked me there. In the train car I lost consciousness and ended up not in the army, but in a Soviet hospital situated 120 kilometers from Kermine. I lay senseless for 16 days, and finally on 1 March I left the hospital: I was barefoot, ragged, weak, deaf, mute, blind and without any identity papers. I dragged myself to the station, which was 11 kilometers away, but I didn’t manage to board the train there. I shuffled for eight more kilometers, but there were still two more to cover: I couldn’t keep to my feet, I saw that the end was near, but at night I dragged myself forward on all fours and somehow managed to reach the station. The train comes, I take a hold of a rod and kneel down on the step. A Soviet tears my hands away, trying to push me off. I tell him that I’m on my way to join the army; he showered abuse on Poland and the Polish Army, but suddenly he let go of me and so I managed to get one station further. The train stops, he kicks me with his shoe and I fall to the tracks, where I lie for a moment, but then I again take hold of the back of the train; and so on 2 March I reached Kermine, where I learned that one of my daughters had died in Kazan, and three children were in an orphanage in Guzar. Then I left Russia. Only now, having returned from Palestine, I have suffered a final blow: I’ve learned that two of my children have died in Guzar, so I have only one daughter left; my wife and five children perished so miserably in Russia, in utter destitution.
At this I conclude my tragedy, but I would like to emphasize that I have described only one percent of what we had suffered and gone through.