1. [Personal details:]
Reserve Second Lieutenant Zygmunt Markiewicz, aged 34, lecturer at universities in France.
2. [Date and circumstances of arrest:]
Captured as a prisoner of war by the Russians on 19 September 1939 in Włodzimierz Wołyński [now Volodymyr-Volynskyi, Ukraine], I escaped on my own from the camp in Yuzhkovo [Yuzha] (near Vladimir on the Klyazma River). I was arrested again in Wojniłów near Kałusz, Stanisławów Voivodeship [now Voynyliv near Kalush, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine], on 28 November 1939, [I was] released due to lack of evidence [illegible], and arrested for the third time on 3 March 1940 while crossing the Romanian border.
3. [Name of the camp, prison, or forced labor site:]
Prisons [in] Kołomyja [now Kolomyia, Ukraine], Stanisławów [now Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine], and Dnepropetrovsk [now Dnipro, Ukraine] (4 April – 15 September 1940), Kharkov [illegible], and Ukhtizhemlag [Ukhta–Izhemsk Camp] Chibyu, Komi ASRR [Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic].
4. [Description of the camp or prison:]
Prison conditions – tolerable room and food only during the investigation (in a special NKVD prison in Dnepropetrovsk); generally incredibly cramped conditions in cells, and not even the most primitive beds provided, which resulted in most prisoners sleeping on the cement floor. In the camp, the accommodation was better.
As far as food was concerned, the conditions in prison were better than in the camp. Medical care – sufficient in normal conditions – was helpless against a dysentery epidemic, for instance. In the camp, the need for a workforce made medical care illusory.
5. [Composition of prisoners, POWs, and deportees:]
A large percentage of Ukrainians from Carpathian Ruthenia, and inmates referred to as zhuliki [offenders sentenced for common crimes such as theft], [were] used mainly as informants. In Ukhtizhemlag camps no. 14 and 15 this element was joined by thieves and smugglers from the national minorities of the USSR (Ingush people and others). Ethnically Russian criminals were the scourge of the camp: pickpockets, burglars, and thugs, who ruled the camp.
6. [Life in the camp or prison:]
[Jobs consisted of] earthworks and carpentry. Wake-up call at four. Ten hours of work [a day] before the outbreak of the Russian–German war, and from 22 June [1941] it was 12 hours, plus the time needed to get to and from the work site – on foot, in an escorted convoy. As for food, [we qualified for] the so-called “first pot” because we failed to meet the quotas. We slept on bunks or on the floor. Since the outbreak of the war, I also worked cutting birch twigs as food for horses. Most of the prisoners doing this work caught malaria.
7. [Attitude of NKVD authorities towards Poles:]
The attitude of the authorities to the Poles was marked by socially motivated hostility [“lords,” “exploitation of the working people”]; they used all kinds of interrogation methods (interrogation at night, starving, solitary confinement, and even beating, both during the initial investigation and at the end. Propaganda in the cell and in the camp consisted of influencing the intellectually weak element by (1) painting false pictures of the power of the USSR; (2) stigmatizing the alleged wrongs perpetrated in “lordly Poland” [a derisive expression common in communist propaganda at that time]; (3) inducing hostility towards the intelligentsia; (4) instilling a belief in the permanent nature of temporary territorial changes (after the invasion of our territory [on 17 September 1939] until the outbreak of the Russian–German war).
8. [Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality:]
Mortality was high during the period [illegible] due to the typical conditions (inmates did not return from hospital to the same cells). In the northern camp, in a climate that was relatively good for us, the health conditions were fairly good. Many Polish citizens of the Jewish faith were said to have died during the winter of 1940-1941 in the camp where I worked. Because I arrived there later, I couldn’t say to what extent these rumors were true.
10. [When were you released and how did you make it to the army?]
Released on 7 September 1941, sent to work at [illegible], I got out and set out for the army at the end of February; stage by stage (350 km on foot in winter), via Kotlas, Kirov, [illegible], I made it to Guzor, where I joined the ranks of the army at the beginning of May 1942.