1. Personal details (name, surname, rank, age, occupation, and marital status):
Rifleman Adam Michałowicz, aged 22, bookkeeper, bachelor.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 24 January 1940, when crossing the border from the Soviet side to the Lithuanian side.
3. Name of the camp, prison, or forced labor site:
Prisons: Lida, Baranowicze [now Baranavichy, Belarus], and in the USSR – Orsza [now Orsha, Belarus].
Forced labor camps: Severno-Zheleznodorozhnyi Lager NKVD [Northern Railway NKVD Camp] and Pechorskiye Lagera [Pechora Camps].
4. Description of the camp, prison, etc. (grounds, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
Prisons were crowded and their inmates hungry, [living] with little air and exercise.
In the forced labor camps there were huts, dugouts, [and] tents riddled with holes where water soaked into – [it was] cold and terribly cramped conditions. No hygiene at all (no facilities or products).
5. Composition of POWs, prisoners, and deportees (nationality, category of crime, intellectual and moral level, mutual relations, etc.):
Prisoners: from all social classes, serving long sentences mainly for political crimes, and fugitives with no sentences. The intellectual level varied, the moral level was very poor, [and] mutual relations were good.
6. Life in the camp, prison, etc. (the course of an average day, working conditions, quotas, remuneration, food, clothes, social and cultural life, etc.):
The wake-up call was very early, at 4:00 AM in the summer, and then there was [work] until 8:00 or 9:00 in the evening. The working conditions were terrible and the quotas were almost impossible to meet. Remuneration was given [only] for meeting or exceeding the quota. Food also depended on work (quota), and clothes [were provided] depending on work efficiency. There was no social or cultural life at all.
7. Attitude of NKVD authorities to the Poles (methods of interrogation, torture, punishments, communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
During the investigation, interrogation was very exhausting: being woken up at night, standing for several hours, threats, [and] solitary confinement.
Communist propaganda: lectures, talks by political instructors (called politruks) and vospitateli (instructors), as well as reading materials.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality (give the names of those who died):
Medical assistance was very limited. You could get into a hospital only when your condition was nearly hopeless. Mortality was very high.
9. What kind of contact, if any, was there with your country and families?
There was no contact with the families who remained in the Soviet-occupied territory. Sometimes letters came from the families deported to Kazakhstan.
10. When were you released and how did you make it to the army?
On 20 September 1941, I was released and joined a transport to the Polish Army, but instead of Buzuluk, the whole transport was directed to the Karakalpak Autonomous Republic in Uzbekistan, on the Amu Darya River, and quartered in kolkhozes [collective-owned farms]. In March 1942, I appeared before a Polish–Soviet medical board and was directed to Guzor [now located in Uzbekistan], where I was enlisted in the Polish Army on 18 April.