1. Personal data:
Józef Głowacki, gendarme Sergeant Major, functionary of the State Police and commandant of a State Police station.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested by the NKVD in June 1940 and charged with espionage and setting up a clandestine organization aimed against the Soviet Union in Niemirów-Zdrój, district of Rawa Ruska.
3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
Court – Niemirów; first the prison set up at the Bridgettine Convent in Lwów, and then the gaol in Starobilsk (Soviet Russia); subsequently forced labor camps beyond the Pechora River, in the direction of Vorkuta.
4. Description of the camp, prison:
a) The jail set up in the building of the municipal court in Niemirów – plank beds without any bedlinen, no water, loads of fleas and terrible filth. No walks.
b) Lwów, the prison set up at the Bridgettine Convent – cell no. 40, tiny, with two rather small windows. Some 50 prisoners. Crowded, stuffy and hot (we would always be fully undressed), lice and bugs. We slept on the floor. A constant lack of water. We had 15-minute walks once, sometimes twice a week. We would be allowed to relieve ourselves – within no more than 5 minutes – in groups of 25. But there was insufficient room in the toilet for so many people. If you failed to relieve yourself within the set time, you would be thrown out of the toilet; those who protested were regularly beaten. Due to the lack of food, many prisoners had stomach ailments. We bathed and had our clothes disinfected once every 14 days.
c) Starobilsk prison – barracks 20 and 21, each comprising two wings. One such barrack wing would house from six hundred to one thousand prisoners. The barracks were made of wood and roofed with planks, which leaked. Some prisoners slept on plank beds, while others – due to the overcrowding – were forced to doze on the wet floor in the passageways between these beds. The place was infested with lice and bugs. We bathed and had our clothes disinfected once every ten days. We received blankets and pallets filled with straw that was nearly completely shredded. There was a lack of air in the barrack. We had a one-hour walk every day. There was no potable water, and our quarters were searched regularly for knives and needles.
d) Forced labor camps in the north, beyond the Pechora River. The barracks were made from logs, as were the plank beds (and they also had knots); we did not have any pallets. The roof leaked, it was cold and wet, and we received no assistance or aid. In a word: beggary.
5. Social composition of prisoners, deportees:
In the prison in Niemirów, I was kept together with thieves and criminals, while in the prison set up at the Bridgettine Convent in Lwów I had the company of “politicals” – mainly Poles and some Ukrainians. In Starobilsk and in the camps up in the north, I lived and worked with Poles, Ukrainians, Carpathian Ruthenians, Soviets, and a smaller number of Lithuanians. On the whole, the prisoners liked each other, and only sometimes did we quarrel due to differences in political leanings or the lack of food; everyone played a waiting game, the Poles especially. The Carpathian Ruthenians complained about the terrible food and the way that they were treated, for – as they themselves said – they had been expecting much better conditions in Soviet Russia; indeed, the majority of them had fled there of their own volition. The communists, too, could not stop grumbling about the conditions existing in the prison and the forced labor camps, and also about the meager food.
6. Life in the camp, prison:
In prison, we would be woken up at 6.00 a.m. daily, whereafter we made our beds and swept the floor. At 7.00 a.m. we had breakfast – half a liter, and sometimes ¾ of a liter of tea. For dinner they gave us ¾ of a liter of watery soup, and the same for supper. Each day in the evening (sometimes in the morning) we would receive black bread (ostensibly 600 grams), soaked in water, two and a half lumps of sugar, and from time to time fish; all this had to last us for 24 hours. [illegible] in the prison set up at the Bridgettine Convent in Lwów, the majority of prisoners were from the intelligentsia, and they would give lectures all day long – talking in hushed voices – about the history of Poland and Polish economics, while engineers would talk about the construction and functioning of bridges, sugar factories, salt mines, coal mines, and other industrial plants in Poland.
Mutual relations between us Poles were on the whole very good, only sometimes were there disagreements of a political nature, when people discussed the recent history of our country.
Life in the forced labor camp in the far north, near the White Sea, was very difficult. First and foremost, it was cold, and due to the lack of firewood and clothing people would fall ill and die en masse in the hospitals. The most widespread sickness was scurvy; men would swell up and then die. We would work for 12 to 14 hours every day, felling trees in the forests or building the railway (we did earthwork). Everything was based on the quota system. Those who due to poor health were unable to fulfill the quota would receive only 300 grams of bread and ¾ of a liter of watery soup per day. There was practically no medical care, and you would be admitted to the hospital only if you had a high fever. The population of the camps included both ordinary criminals and “politicals” – Soviets and citizens of the various countries occupied by Russia. Soviet criminals would rob us Poles of our clothes in broad daylight, and then sell them to civilians outside the camp. And if anyone complained to the guards, he would get beaten. We didn’t receive any remuneration for our labor.
But in Starobilsk we didn’t perform any work. The barracks were guarded by the NKVD; people would barter in clothes, all sorts of underwear, and also in other goods and bread. In exchange for bread and sugar you could get Soviet newspapers, which were smuggled in together with food by some of the prisoners. The prison population included Poles, Ukrainians and Carpathian Ruthenians; many of them were criminals. The food was poor as regards both quantity and quality, comprising tea, fish and 600 grams of half-baked bread, which was soaked in water (as a result, many prisoners suffered from stomach ailments). Mr Tokarczyk, a master of science in forestry from near Sokal, died in Starobilsk of dysentery, in barrack no. 21, on 14, 15 or 16 April 1941.
7. Attitude of the authorities, NKVD towards Poles:
The authorities and the NKVD were hostilely inclined towards us Poles. They kept on repeating that Poland would be no more. They would take us on innumerable nocturnal interrogations – I myself was examined 21 times in the course of one night – and beat us senseless. Doctor Bruchnalski, who was interrogated in the court building in Lwów at Sądowa Street, was beaten so hard that his spine broke.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate:
There was practically no medical assistance, especially as there were no drugs.
9. Was it at all possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family? If yes, then what contacts were permitted?
Political prisoners, and in particular policemen, officers, judges and public prosecutors, had no contact with the home country or their families.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
I was released from prison on 31 August 1941 and sent by the Soviet authorities in a transport [illegible] to the Polish Army in Totskoye, near Buzuluk.
Official stamp, 19 January 1943