Cadet Corporal Tadeusz Janik, 6th Tank Battalion “Dzieci Lwowa” [“Children of Lwów”].
From October 1939 I was in Soviet POW camps in Poland – in Dubno, Ostra Góra near Przemyśl, Mościska and Hureczek near Przemyśl. I would like to add some details to the memoir I’ve written regarding the so-called wolna zsyłka [free exile] and forced labor in POW camps.
While staying in the POW camp in Dubno, I witnessed how civilians were captured and deported deep into Russia. The first branka of exiles took place in March 1940, before the delegate elections for Wierchowny Sowiet. Arrests in Dubno were made at night. Our camp was situated in Barcharz’s hop house, by the road leading to the train station, so we could observe the unusual traffic there. Cars were going back and forth the whole night and the next day, transporting the convicts (they used cars which had been the Polish Post’s property). We knew there were people in the cars because screaming and crying were coming from the covered trucks, and because an NKVD officer was sitting next to the driver. I also saw how transports of exiles were loaded while I was working at the station, unloading the stone cargo. Around 30 freight wagons would be clustered at the sidetrack. For the next 48 hours, men, women and children of all ages were brought there, with only as many belongings as they were able to carry; in many cases it was just what they were wearing. The transport was surrounded by NKVD and nobody was allowed to leave it. If they wanted to satisfy their physiological needs, a guard escorted the prisoners behind a pile of boards stored at the freight station. Awaiting the departure of that “free exile” lasted over 48 hours. The temperature reached minus 30 degrees [Celsius], and the wagons weren’t heated at all. People were heating them with the warmth of their bodies, which might have been easier as around 30 people were placed in every 15-ton wagon, no matter age or gender. I don’t recall the surnames of the people deported from Dubno at the time, because, being a POW, I was constantly escorted by the NKVD; but while working at the station in Dubno, I saw masses of people being deported, and I heard these people cry and scream in despair or sing religious or patriotic songs to lift their spirits (usually “Nie rzucim ziemi...” [the Oath], “Poland Is Not Yet Lost...”, “God Save Poland...”) as they were lined up with the NKVD’s bayonets pointed at them. Nobody was allowed to speak to these people, especially us POWs.
It wasn’t the only transport that took off from Dubno. There were around ten of them – they deported wives and families of officers and non-commissioned officers, State Police constables, Polish units stationing in Dubno, and Polish people who had lived there from time immemorial. Apart from the transports from Dubno, I saw many transports from other areas, which went through Dubno and Zdołbunów to Szepietówka and further into Russia in February, March, April and May 1940. In March 1940, the Pawłowicz family, whom I knew closely, was deported from Dolina (Stanisławów Voivodeship) to the region of Kostanay in Kazakhstan. It consisted of six people. I received four letters from Maria Pawłowicz, who was a pharmacy student at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów in 1939; she worked as a regular worker in sovkhoz and during the summer, that is from April to November 1940, she earned 400 rubles, while in the area where she lived in January 1941, pood (16 kg) of flour cost 120 rubles, pood of potatoes – 50 rubles, a kilo of olives – 50 rubles, warm footwear – 300 rubles. It needs to be mentioned that neither her nor her family (parents, sisters and brothers) had any footwear at all, and their clothes were right only for the Polish weather conditions, not that of North Kazakhstan. Since January 1941, I haven’t had any news of that family.
The second stage of mass exiles to Russia took place in June 1940 and included those who claimed to come from the territory occupied by the Germans. A record was carried out by the NKVD, who announced that all these people would receive a permit to go beyond San and Bug, “to Germans”. Everybody who stepped forward was able to go, not beyond Bug though, but to Sibir. At that time, the convicts weren’t allowed to take any belongings with them. I can recall a certain detail – I don’t remember the surnames – we were going back from work under escort, from Dubno station to the camp in Barcharz’s hop house, when we encountered a couple of cars carrying branka. One of them was open, and inside were three women (members of the Polish intelligentsia, judging by their appearance) screaming at the top of their lungs in despair, and an NKVD agent was trying to calm them down, waving a gun at them. The cars were riding until late night, carrying similar victims. The prison in Dubno was constantly overcrowded, and once every few weeks a transport of convicts would set out for labor camps in deep Russia. Obedience and relative peace were forced by the NKVD with the use of the infamous threat of being exiled to the “white bear land”. Farms abandoned by the exiles were passed on to kolkhozniks brought from Russia. Labor was forced in all POW camps, “rebels” were punished with confinement cells and starvation. In 1941, forced labor was extended to civilians – heavy works, like digging with pickaxes, carrying stones in barrows, separating stones with manual sieves. 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old female Polish school pupils were exploited. That’s the way it was in Mościska and Przemyśl in the years 1940 and 1941.