Volunteer Walentyna Jurko, born on 15 May 1915.
I was arrested on 10 February 1940. The NKVD came at midnight and gave me 15 minutes to pack my things. I could only take some food, no personal belongings. I was taken from the forest service in Tereblicz to Vologda Oblast, to Korolkowski posiołek, in order to do forced labor in the forests. There were about 500 people of Polish nationality in the posiołek. My husband was called buntowszczyk and due to that the NKVD interrogated us. I suffered much because of one of the Poles, Łapszyn from Polesie, who was informing the Soviet commandants about everything that Poles were saying to each other. I’m quoting what he said to my husband: “Goddammit, your Poland propała, a ja kak doma ”.
I was working in the forest very hard, for whole days, heaping logs. I was also a uborshchitsa [cleaner]. Working conditions were terrible, I had nothing to wear and the food rations were scarce. I earned five rubles for ten days of work.
The attitude of the local NKVD toward the Poles was horrible. If you didn’t go to work, you wouldn’t get any bread, so you were too weak to work. They humiliated Poles by punching them in the face. They stressed the necessity of attaining the norms. They were spreading the communist propaganda, children were forced to go to school, communism was being instilled in them, and they were taught only in Russian.
Medical assistance was very poor. There was a doctor, but no medicine, so the doctor was helpless in the face of illness. The hospital was 18 kilometers away. I walked there on foot, carrying a sick baby in my arms, and they refused to help me, saying that there were so many injured soldiers from their front, that there was no room even for them, not to mention Poles. As a result, the child died. It happened also because of the hunger, as there would be times when we didn’t get bread for a couple of days in a row, so I wasn’t able to feed it properly. Once, I remember, I hadn’t had bread for four days, until finally the doctor brought me 200 grams out of pity for the baby.
I received letters from the country until the outbreak of the Soviet-German war.
I was released in November 1941. I left posiołek on my own and traveled 250 kilometers by sledge to the station, and to Lugovoy by train from there. The 10th Division was staying there. My husband joined the army, and I went to Persia. In Tehran, I joined the Women Auxiliary Service on 10 June 1942.
The deceased:
1. forester’s wife Eugenia Świnarska and [her] baby,
2. Colonel Ogrodziński,
3. Woodsman Prokop Kozioł (died of hunger),
4. Konstanty Ostapczuk,
5. Czerwaka and his baby,
6. Suchocki,
7. Lipiec,
8. Żyliński – I don’t recall the names.