I was arrested on 12 February 1940 together with my husband (Michał Jagielnicki, 30 years old) and brother (Piotr Białowąs, 28 years old) on suspicion of counter-revolutionary activities. We were incarcerated in the prison in Kałusz for four months. From Kałusz we were sent to Stanisławów, where I was imprisoned for a few weeks. Next we were taken back to Kałusz, where the trial took place; we were all sentenced to 20 years. After the sentence had been pronounced we made the rounds of various prisons. On 9 July 1940 we were deported from Tarnopol to Russia. In Russia we were again taken from one prison to another. I was incarcerated for the longest period of time in Sizere [?], from where I was sent to a camp in the south, located in the township of Lingota, where we were allocated work. I was assigned to stanki, on which I made blankets; the work quota was set at 7.5 blankets. We worked for twelve hours, and for failure to meet the quotas we received the worst food. Remuneration for our work was very low. When you were sick but weren’t running a temperature of 38 degrees when you came to see the doctor, you weren’t qualified as a sick person. We were punished with imprisonment in the dark cell for not coming to work. In the barracks in which we lived there were all sorts of vermin, such as lice, mosquitoes, bugs and other insects. I worked there for 11 months.
My girlfriends and I lived hand in glove and offered comfort to one another, even though we were forbidden to speak Polish. We were told over and over that Poland was lost and that it would never be restored, that the Poles had sold their country and that even our prayers were wasted, as we would never go back.
When the amnesty was announced to us, we were forced to work even harder, and they kept telling us that the Polish government would not admit us into the army. It was only two months later, that is on 28 October 1941, when we were released from the Gulag camp and sent to Kattakurgan, where I worked on a kolkhoz farm. The work there was equally hard and the remuneration very low. I stayed there until 10 July 1942. Then I went to Almazar, from where I went abroad as a private person and joined the Women’s Auxiliary Service. Now I am in Iraq.