1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, profession, marital status):
Exile Stefania Fijałkowska, volunteer, born in 1906, clerk, married.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was deported to Russia, to northern Kazakhstan, the Semipalatinsk Oblast, the Novo- Szulbinsky region, on 13 April 1940.
3. Name of the camp, prison, forced labor site:
Sovkhoz named after the Second Five Year Plan, Swiniofeżnia [?].
4. Description of the camp, prison (terrain, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
The area of a dozen or so pig farms. Living conditions: damp, clay huts deprived of heating, floors and windows, without any fittings or furniture.
Because of the lack of soap, hygienic conditions were all of a piece with the living conditions.
5. Composition of prisoners-of-war, prisoners, exiles (nationality, types of crimes, intellectual and moral level, mutual relations):
Two hundred women with children, the wives of imprisoned farmers, civil servants, policemen and prison officers. Except for five percent of Ukrainians, all of us were Polish. Detainees represented various intellectual levels, but patriotic sentiments flourished. Mutual relations were passable.
6. Life in the camp, prison (an average day, working conditions, quotas, remuneration, food, clothing, cultural and social life):
[Illegible] each working day for everyone. I worked as a pig handler, first at night and then during the day, from 6.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m. The work I did was very hard. Not only did I have to feed three hundred pigs but I also had to remove their dung three times a day. My remuneration was tied to the pigs’ natural growth. The work allowed me to earn about 800 rubles per month. I was paid the equivalent of 120 to 180 zlotys. Some of what I was owed lined the pockets of our foremen and Soviet officials.
We received from 300 to 500 grams of bread and a kasha soup for dinner. The soup, however, wasn’t served every day. From time to time we were also given a piece of pork. Very often we and the Soviet women who also handled pigs would secretly eat the pig feed.
We got along with each other like a good family. Given the working conditions, it was out of the question for us to organize any cultural life. We had nothing but a few newspapers which we received from the home country.
7 The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles (methods of interrogation, torture, punishments, communist propaganda, information about Poland):
I never talked to the NKVD, except for the exchange which took place when I was collecting the compulsory passport restricting my freedom of movement to the area of the sovkhoz to which I was taken. [illegible] and in this way, after a period of five years, replace this passport with the one which good Soviet citizens, who enjoy the right to travel all around Russia, are issued. I responded to this suggestion with silence.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate (mention the names of those who died):
Medical assistance was minimal (at a distance of five kilometers from the sovkhoz).
| The names of the dead: a) Maria | Kobyłecka | , a policeman’s daughter; b) | Nakoneczna, | wife of |
| [illegible]. |
9. What, if any, was your contact with the home country and your family?
I received about twelve postcards from the home country, from Hrubieszów and Kraków.
10. When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?
I was released on 1 October 1941. I left with my son in search of our family. Later, I joined the Women’s Auxiliary Service.
Official stamp, 9 March 1942