1. Personal Data:
Volunteer Anna Makowska, born 17 June 1915 in Wołoszyn, Brześć on the Bug district; occupation: nurse; widow; staff platoon of Women’s Auxiliary Service, Staging Area Command A.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested on 5 April 1940. I had been harassed by the Soviet authorities for the whole winter, often changing my place of residence. When threatened with arrest, I resolved to cross the border together with MR Kazimierz Baja and 2nd Lieutenant Melechi. We were handed over to the NKVD by Józef Kaczorek, who lived in the Czyżewicze settlement, Brześć on the Bug district.
3. Name of the camp, prison or forced labor site:
I was imprisoned in Brześć, then taken to a labor camp in Novisibirsk oblast, Jaja station.
4. Description of the camp/prison:
In prison, every second day they took us to an interrogation, using coarse language, beating and harassing us in a cruel way. They would put guns to our heads and put us into filthy and wet punishment cells in our underwear. Every other day they gave us a mug of water and 200 grams of bread. In the cells, the bunks and floor were covered with a thick layer of insects. There were 150 people staying in a cell and there would be a bath for that number once a month. If we tried to wash our clothes in the bath, we were sworn at and thrown into punishment cells.
5. The composition of prisoners, POWs, exiles:
There were four hundred Poles for every four thousand people in the camp.
6. Life in the camp/prison:
Forced labor in the camp, 800 grams of bread for meeting the quota, 200 grams of bread and detention for not meeting it.
7. The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles:.
During the investigations and at work, the Soviet authorities kept telling us over and over again that we would never get back to Poland and we would die in the camps.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate:
Medical care was possible, the mortality rate was high.
9. Was there any way to get in contact with one’s country and family?
Communication with our country was poor.
10. When were you released and how did you manage to join the Polish Army?
I was released 31 August 1941, on the grounds of… [fragment missing]