1. [Personal details:]
Master Corporal Piotr Markiewicz, aged 35, farmer, bachelor.
2. [Date and circumstances of arrest:]
On 18 September 1939, [I was] captured as a prisoner of war by the Soviets in the Nowogródek Voivodeship, near the town of Dworzec [now Dvarets, Belarus], together [with] my unit and its command.
3. [Name of the camp, prison, or forced labor site:]
I was held prisoner in [multiple] camps: first in Kozelsk, later I was transferred to an iron ore mine in Krivoy Rog [now Kryvyi Rih] in the Ukraine, then north, near Pechora, and finally to the Ivanovo Oblast [Region], to the POW camp in Yuzha (Vyazniki).
4. [Description of the camp or prison:]
In Kozelsk, we were placed in old buildings in which there had been monasteries. There were no bunks or beds, everyone slept where they could and when they could, because there was not enough space for everyone [to sleep] at the same time, due to cramped conditions and [illegible] ruined by lice. In Krivoy Rog, from October until New Year’s Eve, we slept on bare bunks, covering ourselves with our military coats only, in unheated rooms. There was not a spare shirt to change, but lice were all over the place. In the north, on the Pechora River, it was even worse; we lived in tents put up on marshy ground or in barracks hastily patched together. The wind whistled unbearably and water often poured on our heads; later, bugs returned, more of them than you can imagine – there was not a single place in the barrack without them. We slept on bunks, and underneath the bunks there was water because the barrack stood on a marsh; and if you went out to the yard, there was water and mud for you there too.
5. [Composition of prisoners, POWs, and deportees:]
[Prisoners of] Polish nationality [were] dominate; there were very few Belarusians and Ukrainians, and even fewer Jews; the intellectual level was average and mutual relations were very good.
6. [Life in the camp or prison:]
In Kozelsk, we spent the average day queuing for a meal, which we received once a day – overcooked cabbage leaves without any butter or fat; and there was also a queue for water – [there was] one tap for 10,000 people, so you could make it to the water once in a couple of days. Near Pechora, in the north, the average day was like this: wake-up call at four or five, departure for work (there were about six kilometers to walk), an entire day of hard work, and [then] returning (across the country, through marshland, thickets, and forest) at various times. It depended [what time you would return]: if you met the quota, then [you came back] at eight, and if not, you stayed until you finished, even [if it took] until midnight. The working time was 14 hours. In wintertime you had to go to work in minus 40 degree [weather]. You can imagine a quota as having to wheelbarrow eight cubic meters over a distance of three hundred meters or dig a ditch one meter deep, two meters wide, and twenty meters long – naturally, these amounts were of mud and tree trunks. If the area was better, the quota was two times higher. Unless you met the quota every day for the whole month (and it was totally impossible to meet it), they didn’t pay you a single kopeck. It so happened that no one ever received any money. The food consisted of porridge, which we called chaff. We were given a meal there twice a day: before going to work and after returning from work. The porridge was thin, mostly water with no fats. Sometimes they also cooked dumplings made from bran – very, very thin too. I always dreamed of eating until I was full, because I was always hungry. The regular portion of bread was 300 grams – black bread, all of it half-baked.
As for footwear, we were issued low-cut rubber boots, a kind of ankle-high slippers (called chunye; it was enough to wear them for a few weeks for rheumatism to set into your legs), or bast shoes [shoes made of tree fibers].
Friendly relations could be observed at every turn; if someone was able to do a larger proportion of the quota and received a larger portion of bread, he shared with those who were physically weaker. When a person was wronged by the Soviet authorities, another inmate would stand up for him, heedless of the fact that he was [illegible]. We held a traditional wafer-sharing meeting on Christmas Eve in a dark corner of the barrack; we shared a herring (there was no wafer). There were no holidays, Christmas or Easter, and no Sundays off; we had one day off every two months to rest from work.
7. [Attitude of NKVD authorities to the Poles:]
The attitude of the NKVD authorities was very unfriendly. When we didn’t go to work due to bad weather and difficult conditions, they would grab us by the neck and throw us out, and when we walked too slowly they would set dogs on us, which tore our clothes. When doing this, they used expressions such as “you Polish mug.” For any offenses, they put us in a jail called solitary [confinement] – it was very cramped and, worst of all, it was dirty, as you had to relieve yourself there.
Communist propaganda was everywhere; all the time they persuaded us that communism had to be, and would be, global, and that you had to forget [the] bourgeois life; they [also] organized anti-religious talks. They often mentioned Polish affairs, saying that there was no more Poland, and that Poland would never be; pan’ska Polsha [“lordly Poland,” a derisive expression common in communist propaganda at that time] no longer exists; [and] “not to worry, your families will be brought where you are,” NKVD agents kept telling us.
8. [Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality:]
Medical assistance [illegible] was provided if a prisoner of war was respected by [illegible] or [illegible]; for these reasons and due to the conditions [illegible], including [illegible] [the following] colleagues died: J. Kościuszyk, from [a village] near Łapy, Białystok District; Czesław Czaliński, Łomża District; K. Jańkiewicz, Wilno District; J. Romańczuk, Suwałki District; Franciszek Podbielski, Szczuczyn Białostocki District. And many others whose names I can’t remember because I worked with them for a short time only. Two of them were shot when we were being escorted from one camp to another; I remember that one of them was from the Augustów [District], and the other one from the Lublin [Voivodeship].
9. [What kind of contact, if any, was there with your country and families?]
We were allowed to write letters to our families once a month; I received no reply from home to the letters I wrote. When I asked them why [illegible] there was none, they said to me: “if you work well, you will receive the letters.” I received three letters after the Polish–Soviet agreement, in the middle of August – written on 28 April 1940 from [illegible].
10. [When were you released and how did you make it to the army?] [I was] released from the POW camp under the Polish–Soviet agreement of 30 July 1941 [known as the Sikorski–Mayski Agreement].
When I was in the POW camp in Yuzha, Ivanovo Oblast, Colonel Sulik-Sarnowski of the Polish Army arrived and announced that everyone could join its ranks. I volunteered too; this was on 24 August 1941. I was enlisted in the regiment on 15 September that same year, in Tatishchevo.