1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, occupation, and marital status):
Rifleman Jan Kołodziej, born in 1919, student at the Academy of Foreign Trade in Lwów.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested on 27 April 1940 in the village of Łozówka, district of Trembowla, as the son of a settler, Alojzy from Witosówka, district of Trembowla, who had been deported and imprisoned in February 1940. Charges: 1. being suspected of membership in an anti-Soviet organization, 2. spreading propaganda, 3. planning an escape to Romania.
3. The name of the camp, prison, forced labor site:
Prison in Tarnopol, Kharkiv, labor camps in Ukhta and Tobys – both in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
4. The description of the camp, prison etc. (grounds, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
Conditions in Tarnopol were terrible due to the fact that the prison cells were overcrowded. We had a louse-infestation, dirty underwear, and very little air – we were allowed to take a half-hour walk outside only every other day. There was one case of a person ill with syphilis (Aron Wahrhaflig). The sick were treated in a very harsh way, there was no medicine. The situation was the same in the camps. The barracks were cold and infested with bedbugs.
5. The composition of POWs, prisoners (nationality, types of crimes, intellectual and moral level, mutual relations etc.):
There were many Soviet zhuliks [petty criminals], murderers. The detainees were mostly Chechens, the Kyrgyz, Tatars, Russians, Soviet Ukrainians, and Polish Jews, while 20 percent of the population were Polish. The intellectual level varied. Gymnasium professors (Bober from Zakopane), engineers, priests (Tomasik), teachers, railroad men, and Soviet simpletons, who would only shout and cause trouble. Relations were mostly bad, since the Poles were almost constantly harassed (assigned worse tasks etc.).
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 got up at 6.00 or 5.00 a.m. At 6.00 – 7.00 a.m. we left for work, which lasted 10 or 12 hours. The quota: 1. Clearing snow from an area 72 by 4 meters, 2. Clearing snow and removing tree stumps from an area 25 by 4 meters, 3. Cutting down 30 5-meter-long pine trees with a 16-centimeter diameter at the narrower end. We received no proper wages. Food rations comprised half a liter of thin oatmeal in the morning, a liter of the same soup [for dinner], and 1/8 liter of oat kasha in the evening; the amount of bread depended on how much of the quota had been filled. Those who filled only 10 percent of the quota were sent to a punishment cell, where they were given only 300 grams of bread and soup. For filling over 30 or 60 percent of the quota one would get 500 grams, and for 70–85 percent, 700 grams. This was the norm until the outbreak of the war with Germany.
Poles were given wadded, mostly used clothes. We often worked in rubber boots during 40-degree frosts. This resulted in many cases of frostbite. We didn’t work if the temperature was down to 50 degrees below zero.
There was no cultural life and we did not get on well with each other. Some people played chess with pieces made out of bread. There were no newspapers, books, radio, or any other means of entertainment.
7. The NKVD authorities’ attitude towards the Poles (methods of interrogating, torture, punishments, communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
Interrogations were conducted by means of threats and beatings. They would beat us with rubber truncheons, kick us, and break our fingers. They also promised us the earth if we told the “truth”. The interrogations were conducted at night. They tried to force us to sign false confessions. I was hit in the face twice for refusing to sign them. They derided us, sneered at our government, and tried to convince us that Poland would be no more.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate (provide the surnames of those who perished):
Medical assistance was insufficient and it would come too late. There was a shortage of medicine. The deceased: Bartek – an official of the „Galicja”; Walczak. I was not hospitalized. I was ill with scurvy, but received no treatment.
9. What, if any, was your contact with the home country and with your family:
Not many people received letters from home. Several packages did get to the camp, for instance one for Mr Kwieciński from Wołyń.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
The directive was read out to us on 24 August 1941, at night. People of other nationalities were asked to step outside. I was released on 12 September. We were issued identity cards and a railway transport straight to Buzuluk was organized. From there I went to Totskoye, to the 6th Infantry Division, on 23 September 1941.
Official stamp, 27 February 1943