1. Personal data:
Reserve corporal Julian Janulin, profession: prison guard, married.
2. Dates and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested on 23 October 1939 at 8 a.m., on Tartani Street in Wilno. I was captured by an NKVD major assisted by a former communist, Lejzor Matyszawski.
3. Name of the camp, prison, or forced labor site:
After I was arrested they placed me in the basements of the district court in Wilno, where I met prison commissioner Strumski and prison doctor Witold Mikuć. On the same day we were deported to Wilejka Powiatowa and incarcerated in the local prison. I was summoned for interrogation on the night of 27 October 1939. During the interrogation, I was beaten so severely that blood went through my throat. Such interrogations lasted until 27 March 1940, several times a night. On 15 May 1940, I was taken to Głębokie and placed in Berezwecz. On 27 June, I was taken from Berezwecz prison to Połock, where I was put in prison. I was read a sentence of eight years of correctional camps, and on 25 August 1940 I was deported to Severo-Pechora labor camps.
4. Description of the camp, prison, etc.:
In all of the prisons listed above it was very dirty and stuffy, and they were extremely overcrowded; walks were allowed once a week, we were never shaved, and there was hardly any water available for washing. We had a bath once a week, but with no disinfection. In Połock, I was imprisoned in a church, with 500 other people. We had to take care of our natural needs inside the church.
6. Life in the camp, prison:
On 25 August 1940, I was taken from Połock to the labor camps in the North, near Pechora river. [They loaded] 40 people per wagon, and it was more than a month before we arrived at our destination. We were unloaded in the taiga and mixed with prisoners [sentenced for] various crimes: thieves, bandits, and other categories of Soviet criminals, who robbed me of everything, leaving me barefoot and naked. Then I was dressed in padded clothes and torn and burnt wojloks, which didn’t keep me warm in the freezing temperatures that they have up there in the North. I couldn’t meet the assigned work quota. I was exhausted by dysentery, which I had gone through on the way, and because of that I received 300 grams of black bread and some thin soup. The quotas were subject to change. If I filled them one day, I got some more bread and better soup, but the next day the quota was doubled, and I had to starve again. There was no companionship there; people stole the last pieces of bread from each other.
7. The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles:
The NKVD’s attitude was very bad, as they would laugh at the Polish government and what they led Poles to. Soviet authorities were praised.
9. Was there any possibility to communicate with one’s country and family?
I didn’t have any contact with the country and family. I wrote a couple of letters but received no response.
10. When were you released and how did you manage to get into the army?
I was released from the labor camps on 22 August 1941 and worked in a kolkhoz for 300 grams of flour a day. On 29 March 1942, I left for Persia.
Place of stay, 14 March 1943