Master Corporal Jan Miszewski, 44 years old, senior sergeant of the Border Guard, married.
On 20 September 1939, at 2 AM, along with the entire Grajewo police station, [illegible] Brasław [Braslaw] command, and other army units, I crossed the Polish-Latvian border in Turmont [Turmantas] and I was interned.
In Latvia, I stayed in the camps in Daugavpils, Liten, Ulbroka, and for three months I went to work for a farmer. The treatment I received in Latvia was impeccable in all respects. The military authorities strictly followed the legal provisions on internees, and none of the officers, NCOs, or soldiers caused me the slightest unpleasantness, not even verbal. When the Soviets entered, relations exacerbated; however, despite this, the Latvian military authorities continued to show a lot of understanding and friendliness towards us.
Around 15 August 1940, several civilians arrived at the Ulbroka camp. They later turned out to be from the NKVD, and they started writing down some personal details, claiming that they were listing those who want to go to Poland under German rule. A prison ambulance came three days later, onto which 13 officers were loaded, including Colonel Dukawicz [?], and taken away from the camp.
At 11 AM on 22 August 1940, several NKVD officers and dozens of boitsy [low ranking soldiers] with dogs, machine guns, and handguns, ran up to the camp and then dispersed. Some NKVD agent in civilian clothes first accused the Latvian commandant that he had let the Poles flee, that he would answer for it, that he’d make sure of it, etc., which did not even happen at all. Then, the officers, military police, the Border Guard, and the State Police were separated from the rest of the army; these units were detained in the yard, and the military units were taken to a vacant room. The NKVD agent started talking down in a conceited voice, that he had imagined that military police, the Border Guard and the State Police as strong, unshakable people, like those who used to be in Poland. Now, all he sees is little slouches; then he added that [illegible] it will be better. After this, they started a personal search, which was just limited to taking away sharp tools like knives, forks, spoons, pocket knives, scissors, etc. We were supposed to be taken to the station, but the Latvians delivered trucks and we were driven there under heavy escort. The NKVD agents bragged that now, relations have changed; that in 1920 they were barefoot, in shreds and hungry, but today they’re strong and they can do whatever they like. We arrived at the station at 2 PM. The small wagons with boarded up windows were loaded each with 48 people; the wagons were padlocked and quickly left for Russia.
We traveled three days. During this ride we were given bread and half a herring each, two times; once a day we were given water that was taken from a puddle near the tracks. When the transport commandant was reminded that the water was unfit to drink, he simply gave an ironic response that we didn’t have to drink it. On the third day of the drive, our transport was separated. The military units went to the Yukhnov camp, while the officers, military police, police and Border Guard went to Kozelsk, where we arrived on 25 August 1940. At the railway station in Kozelsk, 35–40 people were loaded on each of the cars; we were ordered to pick up the luggage and sit down in a way that no one could move. After the warnings and the yelling of the boitsy, we set off to the camp, which was seven kilometers away from the station. It was the first time in my life to experience such a hard journey. My limbs went completely numb, I couldn’t move at all. Three people fainted during this short ride.
At the camp in Kozelsk, they first cut our hair and then a medical examination was carried out by women; each person was examined by three. Once the medical exam was over, they started personal searches. They were carried out with all the possible harassments. They stripped us naked, told us to bend over, do squats, dress and undress, while all sharp tools, civilian clothes, Latvian and Polish money, watches, wedding bands and rings were taken; religious objects were brutally destroyed.
I was checked only once. For the entire time there, I didn’t get even one letter from my wife, even though she and my son were ill [?] in the Pavlodar oblast for over half a year.
The camp had mostly Poles and about 10 people of Jewish nationality. They kept on setting up different informants, they often held talks about relations in the Bolshevik paradise; they even started setting up parties of godless people.
The food we got consisted of 800 grams of bread, groats, cabbage or beets, and fish. The former staroste [county chief] Pełczyński and one border guard died in the camp; one officer and a policeman committed suicide; four or five people died whose names I don’t remember; and one officer, one police constable, and one [illegible] military policeman went crazy. The commissars often said that they had made a covenant with the Germans and now they don’t fear the world, and that there’ll come a time when they will deal with that fucking England.
On 9 February 1941, new revisions took place and preparations for a journey took place in the morning. The Border Guard, the police, military police, a few civilians, several officers, among them Major Aleksandrowski, staroste Drożeński, were taken away and at 9 PM were brought to the railway station in Kozelsk. Once again they loaded 45–50 people into each wagon and deported them via Moscow, Volkovstroy [?], Kandalaksha to Murmansk, where we arrived on 15 June 1941. During these five days we got two cups of soup, we weren’t given medical care, the wagons were shut all the time, and we received water once a day with great difficulty. On the way, we passed many areas of imprisonment camps; these people were emaciated, dirty, ragged, and covered with lice. We could see lines of figures [that had] been driven with all their assets in a bag on their backs. They never parted with their belongings; they worked and slept with them, otherwise it would have been stolen. Nearly the entire Karelian-Finnish Isthmus with Murmansk was one enormous camp of prisoners. From Murmansk we were led to the so-called Weeping Valley, which was located seven kilometers from the port. There, we were placed in a civil prison camp. They put us wherever it was possible – in tents, barracks, wherever anyone found room; many people slept outside. Even though this was in June, there was still snow in those areas. When we were led through Murmansk, I saw how on one side of the road there was a football game taking place, and right next to it there were women crushing rocks and repairing the road. There we worked for 16 hours, because at this time of the year in these areas, the sun practically doesn’t set. It is still very cold though.
On 21 June 1941, we were led out of the camp to the port and there, about 4,000 people were loaded onto the “Klara Zetkin” ship, a cargo ship with a capacity [displacement] of 8,000 tons. We were packed so tightly that no one could even dream about lying down. For seven days on board the ship, I sat on a wooden perch next to the stairs that led to the deck. The toilets were on the deck, where they let us go only one by one. If you wanted to get there, you had to stand in a queue for four hours, so out of necessity some would go on the spot. [illegible] getting through this tight mass of people to the other side of the ship was impossible. No one can stand on their feet for seven days, so the soldiers [attached] themselves with straps or rubber to the walls of the ship and they made [it through] the trip in a hanging position. You got the impression that these people were hanging. On the first day we received 800 grams of bread and 400 grams of canned peas, on the second day they gave us half of this, on the third – a quarter, on the fourth day only a few crumbs of bread, and on the fifth, sixth and seventh days we didn’t get any provisions, while nobody could even try to get anything. In the last couple of days, few [people] went out to the toilet on the deck, plus the cold was taking its toll as we were traveling between ice caps. We were not served any hot food, tea, or water.
On 22 June, when we were at sea, we learned that our ship was stopped by a Finnish submarine and that the Germans were waging war with the Soviets. The war broke out when we were in the Murmansk Bay. None of us were terrified of this outbreak.
After three days of travelling, we arrived at the shores of the Kola Peninsula; we weren’t unloaded until four days later, on 29 June. That day we were placed in a camp on the Ponoi river. There was still a lot of snow, and drinking water came from the puddles that were in the camp. There weren’t enough tents, so people slept in the open. Finally, we were given one tent with holes that was meant to accommodate 70 [people], but 460 people were placed in it; there was 14.5 cm per person to sleep in shifts. After a few days, the puddles had been exhausted; we had to supply the kitchen with water from the Ponoi River, which was about 200 meters down [from us]. At least 270 people were needed for this, who formed a chain and passed up the water in buckets. It took about 2.5 hours twice a day. The sea water was salty, there was no water for washing; food consisted of 300 grams of bread, soup, and fish.
We worked on building a road in this tundra 12 to 14 hours [a day], day and night in shifts (there was no night), without any remuneration. The second party of our people worked 12 kilometers away. As there was no road or access there, we had to deliver supplies there once a day on our backs. This line was made up of 70 to 100 people, and because everyone there was hungry, and there were very little provisions, a lot of it disappeared along the way, which made the food situation even worse. The people who worked further away from us didn’t have any tents. The NKVD agents found many grounds to punish us for any committed offense. We were put in a barrel or, usually, in a hole dug in the ground: there, they’d sit the offender down without any trousers, on bare ground, and told [them] to keep our bare feet in water for many days.
On the second day after arriving in Ponoi, the commissar ordered an assembly and told us that Nazi bandits had attacked their country and are murdering them; that an alliance with England had been made. He did not mention anything about Poland, he only stated that one day, perhaps it may come to an agreement, but there’s no chance for this now. Our luggage [was placed?] outside the camp and we were allowed to take it only after a few days. Due to a lack of nutrition and being without even the most primitive accommodation, we attained only 6–15 percent [of the quota]. They threatened us “you will work, [or] we’ll deal with you”.
On 11 July 1941, work was stopped and we were ordered to prepare for departure. We were given a packed lunch, which consisted of boiled unpeeled potatoes cooked three days prior, half a herring, and about 10 grams of pork fat. During the night, we were loaded onto the “Andan” ship, and on 12 July at 6.30 PM we left the Kola Peninsula in the same conditions as on the “Klara Zetkin”, the only difference being that they gave sea water to drink in abundance. On 13 July at 5 PM we reached the port of Arkhangelsk. We weren’t taken off the ship until three days later, that is, on 16 July at 4 PM; we weren’t given any provisions. So, for almost a whole week, I lived on boiled potatoes, of which I got an incomplete set of utensils and dishes, and 10 grams of bacon, and on the ship we were given one salt fish per two people. We were hungry and exhausted. The boitsy [low ranking soldiers] threw rotten fish through the hole in the ship floor for fun and enjoyed it, while some of the people threw themselves at this “dog’s meat”. We started singing patriotic songs and shouting as a sign of protest, but what good did it do – no one was released on the deck and our voices didn’t go far.
We were led into the prepared camp in Arkhangelsk. In the section to where we were led (half of the transport – 2,000 people), the entire square covered an area of 45 by 48 steps; there were five barracks standing there, a latrine [trench used as toilet], and a brook that flowed through the middle with dirty, stinking water. There was no room to stand, let alone sleep. I was fortunate that someone gave me some [room] to sleep for 3–4 hours. We slept in shifts with [illegible] Drożański, Mangołowski, and others. For two days we still weren’t given anything to eat, nor could we see a doctor. Supposedly this was due to the fact that the NKVD transport unit hadn’t yet handed us over to the guard unit. The camp had no water, so people drank from this stinking brook and two days later dysentery emerged to the extent that people didn’t make it to the latrine; anyway, there was no room there.
The living conditions in this camp were so hard that they cannot be described. We didn’t count on anything, we brawled, shouted, sang – everything just to make these people who had no heart or conscience to ask for a doctor and to give food and water. Their response was that they set up double posts armed with machine guns. Despite this, we still believed that our liberation was coming soon. The commissars began to show a certain helplessness, but also indifference towards us. On the third day, we were given food, water was provided, and they ensured us that everything would get better, just as long as we would calm down. But what did this matter! The dysentery was spreading terribly. On 21 July, we were given provisions for five days; quite abundant compared to that before, though only rusks baked in sea water, and on 22 July, we left in closed wagons each carrying 50 people. This time they didn’t carry out any personal search. The transportation conditions didn’t change a bit; we had many people suffering from dysentery in the wagon. For five days we begged and screamed for medical help every chance we got. We didn’t get any; death came sooner, because these people did not want to understand us. I lay on the very bottom of the wagon and looked through a small hole. A boyets [low ranking soldier] noticed this and suddenly he hit that spot with a bayonet; luckily he missed. During the ride, we met masses of refugees who were riding on passenger freight trains, usually on the platforms, with their simple belongings. The boitsy would tell the civilians that we were Germans, and they wanted to place a few [friends] under arrest for saying that we weren’t Germans, but Poles – treason. At 4 PM on 26 July 1941, we arrived in Włodzimierz [Vladimir]. That evening, one of my friends asked me if anybody in our condition would be strong enough to do another 20 kilometers. He didn’t need to wait long for the answer: the next day at 6 AM we were unloaded from the wagons, the entire transport was divided into four groups, the packages were collected onto carts, and we were led to Suzdal (40 kilometers away). On the way, people from the fields rushed up to see the German prisoners, and the boitsy in all seriousness told them how we were Germans, dressed without uniforms, ragged, and how elegant the Krasnaya Army [Red Army] looks compared to them. At the twentieth kilometer, they prepared a surprise: everyone was given half a liter of warm water.
After all these trips from Kozelsk via Murmansk, “Klara Zetkin”, Kola Peninsula, and Arkhangelsk, people were so exhausted that they saw wandering figures; emaciated, lean, and starved, so the walk was very slow. The commissars and boitsy hastened us with yelling and rifle butts. People would fall and lose consciousness from the fatigue. One of the NKVD officers right beside me tried to hasten a policeman who had fallen. He picked him up brutally, and when he fell [again], he kicked him, raised him up and then threw him to the ground. I told him to keep [illegible] to himself, because this man cannot go on. He told me to take him. I said that he should put him on the car or carry him on his back. Angry, he cursed, insulted, and then began to shoot his gun. The entire way was full of such incidences. We could not go as fast as the escort, so every now and then they would point their LMGs [at us].
6 hours 21 [sic] – we arrived in the city of Suzdal. One policeman died on the way and one on the third day. More unconscious people were brought. Anyway, at the end of the journey, even the boitsy were falling asleep when we stopped to rest. When we passed through Suzdal, the escort behaved quite well, they didn’t even stop us from talking to the civilian population. The next day after arriving, I had a rather heated conversation with the commandant of the Suzdal camp. The commandant and two other civilians were talking with our soldiers. The commandant, a major of the NKVD, told them that there were many illiterates in Poland. The soldier replied – yes, there were, but all countries have such illiterates, including the Soviets, America, England, etc.; they are people who are mentally completely unfit and they cannot be taught. At these words, the commandant said why other languages were forbidden in Poland, especially Russian. I said that it’s not true, and the best proof is that he can communicate freely with almost all of us; besides, you were on our territory, so you could see that it was not so, and Ukrainians even had their universities and no one bothered them; every library had books by foreign authors, including Soviet ones. He said it was not true, you don’t know a thing. At this I told him that he had just revealed everything he knew. Then he asked why there is such nationalism in Poland, and not internationalism like it is in their country; why is there no such freedom, liberty, and equality in Poland, as good as it is in their country. I said: “I don’t know how you conceive liberty, equality, and a free life; why, after helping the Germans finish off Poland, did you take to exterminating the Poles; why did you deport the entire population to different prisons, camps, taigas and tundras? Unless you wanted to show us your freedom.” At this he said: “Speak only for yourself!” “Well, why did you take my wife and 10-year-old boy, after all, they would not have overthrown your system?” He replied: “We had to defend them so that the local people would not hurt them.” I said that it was a superfluous problem; on the contrary, after my departure, the people helped my family. Neither I nor my wife had to fear the local people. He asked: “And where were you?” I replied that I was being interned in Latvia. “And why did you run away?” I said that I didn’t run away, but that’s the order I received. He asked who gave us the order and who could have issued it on his own. I then asked if the freedom in their army is so advanced that every boyets can do what he likes and not obey orders. He replied that that was something else entirely [up] to them. I said, “My wife was not running away, and she could have gone to the German partition; it was only a matter of being a Volksdeutscher [ethnic German], she wasn’t running away from you; yet your freedom meant a kolkhoz in Kazakhstan!” At this he declared: “you were running away from us, you and your family were our enemy.” I said that we were informed about your freedom differently. We were told that there are 40–45 million imprisoned with you; we didn’t believe it, we couldn’t even fathom how it was possible to lock up a population of a country like England in prisons or camps. But after passing through Kalinin, Volkovstroy [?], Murmansk, Kola Peninsula, and Arkhangelsk, we could see for ourselves the sad truth about your freedom. “Who said this – Wyszyński?” He asked. I said that it was not Wyszyński, but a commissar of the same rank as him. He responded to this with exultation that it was our army. I said: “My knowledge seems to fail me, I don’t think you know your army, I still don’t think so little of them; I won’t believe that your army is enclosed behind barbed wire lines, that they are guarded by civilians in booths, with bayonets, or that they walk with a bundle on their back to work with a bayonet pointed at them, in dirty, disgusting rags, barefoot, in bast shoes, unwashed, etc. No, commissar, that’s not your army, it’s your citizen who, according to your concept, enjoys the greatest freedom in the world. And you [illegible] your army too much.” At this, the commandant got completely irritated and said: “We’d need to talk a long time with you, and there isn’t any time.” I said: “You talked for two years, and further talk is useless.” They made me a fascist!
A week after we arrived in Suzdal, we were informed that we are free citizens of the Polish state. The conditions in this camp were much better than in the previous ones. Although we were given 500 grams of bread and a watery soup, our treatment improved. The commissar conducted frequent lectures, he encouraged to cooperate, and he threatened that they will detain those who are disloyal to them when the commanders come to the army. On 24 August 1941, a Polish delegate arrived at the camp, Lieutenant Colonel Sulik-Sarnowski, and that same day I was admitted to the Polish army. As the delegate of the Republic was delivering his speech, the Soviets removed their posts from the camp. I received some 500 rubles as moral compensation. I could not buy anything for it, because a kilogram of tomatoes cost 10 rubles.
On 3 September, now without a convoy, we marched out from Suzdal to the railway station in Włodzimierz. Old women were making the sign of the cross and wept for us. On 4 September at 11 AM, we left Włodzimierz and headed to Tashkent, where the transport arrived on 8 September. On 6 September, as the train departed, the senior rifleman, Gromadziński, was run over. On 8 September, I joined the 5th Infantry Division in Tashkent. Due to poor health, during the first days of November I was assigned to the Tashkentan [?] company.
On 7 November, we were loaded into wagons and given provisions for 10 days. During this journey I got to know the delight of Soviet citizenship in all its glory. When we passed Engels station, our train was fired upon by a Bulgarian plane; outside the city of Aralsk, on 17 November, our transport’s wagon caught fire, and seven people were totally incinerated before the train stopped, 12 who were seriously burned were taken to hospital, some jumped out from the moving train into the snow and thus saved their own lives. On 21 November, we arrived at Arys station. We weren’t let into Tashkent because of overcrowding. After three days, we were directed to Almaty. On 25 November, we arrived at Jambul station. Someone had robbed a wagon with sugar, the NKVD carried out a search, a bag of sugar was found in our wagon, but the perpetrators were not there. They took me for the wagon commandant and they wanted to arrest me. Our transport was stopped at this station for three days and they interrogated [me] about the perpetrators; they were arguing that I must answer for it because sugar was stolen and there must be a perpetrator, that’s their law. I said that even if it was so, people just wanted to eat; we were in the train for 25 days and we had received provisions for 10 days, we had not received any provisions for 15 days, people were selling the last of their clothes to stay alive, and your duty was to give us subsistence. After detaining six people from the transport, they released four of our wagons and drove us to Almaty. On 28 November, our transport was turned back via Frunze to Tak Mak, where we were unloaded on 5 December.
I sat on the train for a whole month, and we had received provisions for 10 days. For 20 days, everyone ate whatever they could, it depended on deceit and luck. Until we departed from Tatishchev, I had 32 rubles on me, this money was enough for only one day. Describing these hardships is simply impossible; one would have to experience it or have an incredible imagination that focused on the worst conditions that a person can only imagine.
From there we were led to the Kisil-Saj kolkhoz in Kazakhstan, near the Czu river; 150 people were placed in two mud huts, on dirty and tattered pallets that were looming with lice. Food consisted of nothing more than 300 grams of [illegible] with bran flour, without any spices, bread, or even salt. The kolkhoz workers there were not much better off. Apart from the predstavitel’ [representative of the rural council] of the kolkhoz, there practically wasn’t anyone there who favored the Soviet system. One had to struggle to get even that 300 grams of flour, almost beg, scare [illegible], etc. The [illegible] NKVD came, they promised help, even [illegible], but it ended at that.
After less than three months in the kolkhoz, on 27 February 1942, I made it to the 10th Infantry Division in Lugovoy. I got there totally exhausted, blind, sick with jaundice. People were dying massively to typhus in the kolkhozes; Rifleman Warmiński died from jaundice in our kolkhoz. In the neighboring kolkhoz, seven Poles died of typhus on one day. It was dangerous to remain in the kolkhoz, and there was no medical care. When I came to Lugovoy, I met a friend who I knew from Kozelsk, Second Lieutenant Bluma. He gave me my family’s address and I met up with them four days later. I was sure I’d never see them again, because despite my hard efforts, I hadn’t received any information from my family. I was lucky as I could take my wife to Persia in a dozen or so days, the country that brought us back to life.