1. Personal Data:
Rifleman Juliusz Manber, 27 years old, press correspondent, single.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 29 June 1940, in the town of Jaworów (voivodeship Lwów), I was arrested together with my brother. That night we were deported far into the USRR. Our contingent consisted of up to a thousand exiles, 35 in each hermetically sealed wagon.
3. Name of the camp/prison:
Petrovskoye Ozero, Barnaul Oblast.
4. Description of the camp/prison:
Wooden barracks infested with bedbugs at a logging site in a damp, malarial environment. The hygienic conditions were beneath contempt (baths were set up only a few weeks before the amnesty). The camp was surrounded by thick forests.
5. Composition of POWs, prisoners, exiles:
Jews, Poles, and a couple of Ukrainians, representing a wide range in terms of education and intellectual standing. There were no informers.
6. Life in the camp/prison:
Workdays – in theory 8 hours long – were dragging on longer. Cases of forcing prisoners to fill the quotas were common. Remuneration was miserable, so was the food, and the clothing of the exiles wasn’t taken care of at all. Often they would force us out to work at night, explaining this as “making up for your negligence”.
7. The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles:
A brutal attitude – regular detentions in a cold punishment cell, without any food, for not reaching the quotas. From time to time the so-called pieriekliczki, during which they would try to knock the idea of Poland’s rebirth out of our heads.
8. Medical care, mortality, hospitals:
There was one feldsher, who suspected a conspiracy in every ill individual, usually not letting us off from work. No hospital at the site. The mortality was up to 20 per cent.
9. Was there any possibility of getting in contact with one’s country and family?
The exiles received parcels and letters, after going through the NKVD’s censorship beforehand. Old letters and photographs were looted.
10. When were you released and how did you manage to get into the army?
I was released on 19 October 1941, and set off for Uzbekistan, where – like others – I was living close to starvation. I joined the army in Kermine in the first half of February 1942.