1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, Field Post Office number, age, occupation, marital status):
Senior Rifleman Cadet Tadeusz Krokoszyński, student at the Piotr Skarga State Secondary School in Rohatyn.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested at the Polish-Hungarian border in the spring of 1940, on 26 March.
3. Name of the camp, prison or forced labor site:
Stanisławów, Kharkiv, Komi ASSR, Chibyu.
4. Description of the camp, prison etc. (grounds, buildings, housing conditions, hygiene):
We lived in barracks whose walls were peppered with holes through which wind and frost would constantly get inside. The conditions were awful: we slept on bare pallets, as we had nothing to use as bedding. Besides, we were plagued by hunger and by other misfortunes it led to.
5. The composition of POWs, prisoners, exiles (nationality, categories of crimes, intellectual and moral standing, mutual relations etc.):
The majority were Poles, imprisoned for various crimes. I say various because there were political prisoners of whom some had been arrested at the border, while others – whom they called counter-revolutionaries – had been taken straight from their homes or from the street. The majority of exiles were intelligent people. Their attitude towards the representatives of the lower orders – I mean laborers and others – was friendly, even cordial.
6. Life in the camp, prison etc. (daily routine, working conditions, work quotas, remuneration, food, clothes, social life etc.):
Life in the camp looked as follows: we were woken up at 4.00 a.m.; then we had breakfast. This breakfast was a joke: a teaspoon of kasha and some clear hot water, unsweetened, of which we were sick and tired anyway, and which made people die. After breakfast we set off for work. We had to work all day long on an empty stomach, as only in the evening could one eat a more “substantial” meal, that is, some watery soup and again some kasha and fish, and then we went to sleep on our hard beds. The work was hard; we were paid in bread, and we had to toil day in day out to earn it.
7. The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles (interrogation methods, torture and other forms of punishment, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
The NKVD authorities were very hostile, as shown by the interrogation methods and torture that we had to endure during our interrogations. Communist propaganda was actively spread. We were constantly being told that everything was lost, and that we could be saved only by taking their citizenship and staying there to work and live as they did.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate (provide the surnames of those who perished):
Medical assistance was next to none, and even if it was provided, it was so poor that – so to speak – the person who fell ill pinned more hopes on a healing miracle than on getting any medical help. The mortality rate was very high: 80 out of 100 men would die of one or other illness.
9. Was there any possibility of getting in contact with one’s country and family?
As far as this issue is concerned, so few of us had any contact with the home country that one might as well say that there was none. As for myself, I was unable to establish any contact and I haven’t learned anything about my family to date.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
Immediately after the proclamation of the amnesty we were separated from the other people. A few weeks later, a transport was organized and we were sent to Totskoye near Buzuluk (Russia). Before that happened, we had suffered many tribulations, as they wanted to send us for labor instead of transporting us to where our army was being raised.
Official stamp, 10 February 1943