1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, occupation, and marital status):
Senior Rifleman Zenon Kokosiński, 24 years old, student, unmarried.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 7 March 1940, I was arrested at night, in my home in Łuck, after the Pioneers of Young Poland organization had been exposed.
3. The name of the camp, prison, forced labor site:
The Bureya Railway Construction Camp, Amur Oblast.
4. Description of the camp, prison etc. (grounds, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
Huge, unheated, overcrowded barracks infested with bugs and lice.
5. The composition of POWs, prisoners (nationality, types of crimes, intellectual and moral level, mutual relations etc.):
The majority were Polish, Kazakh, Turkmen, and Ukrainian. There were political criminals, so- called counter-revolutionaries – mostly members of the intelligentsia. Thefts and robberies were ignored by the NKVD.
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, etc.):
We worked from dawn till dusk without pay. For filling 120 percent of the quota, one would get 700 grams of bread and a two-course dinner. The quota: Digging 4 cubic meters of earth and hauling it away on a wheelbarrow. The clothing: rags and rubber boots made out of tires. People of each nationality stuck to their own kind. There were no means of entertainment.
7. The NKVD authorities’ attitude towards the Poles (methods of interrogating, torture, punishments, communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
Hunger, isolation – a four-day long, non-stop interrogation during which they tried to force me to admit guilt by making me sit completely still on top of a stool with no seat. Information about Poland: There will be no more Poland.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate (provide the surnames of those who perished):
There were clinics in which there was a shortage of medicine and specialists. Mortality rate – 5 percent. (Ryszard Nowak, Tadeusz Lubański).
9. What, if any, was your contact with the home country and with your family:
Letters arrived rarely. Packages would come with half of the provisions missing for some mysterious reason.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
After being released on 25 December 1941, I travelled to Barnaul, Novosibirsk Oblast. I joined the Polish army in Gorchakovo on 23 March 1942. I travelled by train with a ticket bought by the NKVD.