1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, Field Post Office no., age, occupation, civil status):
Corporal Władysław Gryksztas, 30 years old, a secondary school teacher by profession, unmarried, Field Post Office no. 139.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested on 10 April 1941 and charged with being a member of a “clandestine radio crew in Lwów”.
3. Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:
They deported me to Aktobe in Kazakhstan (USSR).
4. Description of the camp, prison, etc. (grounds, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
The only prison that I was detained in was that in Lwów.
5. Social composition of POWs, prisoners, deportees (nationality, category of crimes, intellectual and moral level, mutual relations, etc.):
The prisoners deported to Kazakhstan were of various ethnicities: Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian. The majority were intelligentsia from the Lwów voivodeship.
6. Life in the camp, prison, etc. (the course of an average day, working conditions, quotas and norms, wages, food, clothing, social and cultural life):
Your life in the settlement was completely dependent on work. In the beginning, I worked in the “Canton”, earning 250 rubles. The food they gave us in the canteen was poor. We wore our own personal clothes, for it was impossible to buy clothing of any kind. Before the outbreak of hostilities between the Germans and Russia, there were some 500 inmates in the camp in Aktobe. Pressured by the NKVD, we Poles would avoid gathering together. There was no cultural life at all.
7. Attitude of the authorities, NKVD towards Poles (methods of interrogation, torture, punishments, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
The authorities and the NKVD treated us mercilessly. The method of interrogation would depend on the crime you were charged with. It was nothing unusual to be beaten or injured during an examination. As regards information about Poland, this reached the settlement through letters and new deportees.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate (provide the surnames of those who perished):
All in all, the hygienic and medical conditions were deplorable. For although there was a dispensary, it had no drugs whatsoever. I don’t remember the surnames of those who died in Aktobe.
9. Was it at all possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family? If yes, then what contacts were permitted?
I had no contact with my family or the homeland.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
On 30 June 1941, after I had been released, I left for Alma-Ata, from where on 30 August 1941 I departed for Buzuluk, finally reporting to the Polish Army in Totskoye on 26 September 1941.
Official stamp, 2 March 1943