Second Ensign [officer cadet] Senior Rifleman Stanisław Pałuszka, 44 years old, junior high school teacher, married.
I lived in Dziśna, Wilno voivodeship. The Soviet occupation caught me there. I was ordered to continue teaching as a physics teacher in a 10-grade school that was initially a Polish junior high school. Although they didn’t trust me (I did not tutor any particular class), I worked there until the end of the school year 1940–1941. Shortly before evening, on 22 June 1941, two men (one of them was a member of the regional party committee and the other was a local called Stoma) armed with Nagants came to my house and ordered me to go to the militia station.
At the time I didn’t have a good grasp of the situation and I went with them without saying goodbye to my family or taking warm clothing (it was summer). At the militia station there were around 40 people in the same situation. After having been searched, we were put under arrest. During the first interrogation they accused me of “being educated”. How was it possible for the son of a worker to receive an education in the Pol’sha of noble s?
After four days, without letting us take a single item from home, they took us to Połock in a truck and put us under arrest there. Among the detained there were the Reverend Zygmunt Jagielnicki, a Franciscan, Mrs. Zaranek, a widow who had left behind two young children, and many more people of various social and national origins. Two days later, they ushered us into a train. As many as 53 prisoners were huddled together in the wagon. There were many Soviet officials and many of our compatriots among the arrested. There was a commander of the Tatar cavalry, a land owner from Postawy and many others. We were in insufferable conditions in the wagon, it was hot, crowded, closed. The small windows in each wall were only half opened so that we couldn’t see military preparations and transports. We were nearly completely undressed, but it was still no good, we were soaked with sweat. A few times during our journey, there were German planes above us, but they did not bombard the train. We were on the road for three weeks. Everyone tried to press their noses against the wall with a crack in it to breathe some fresh air. Food ration: 400 grams of bread, a few tiny salty fish. Water was given irregularly and in very small quantities. We were extremely thirsty. People satisfied their bodily needs on the spot. This waste wasn’t removed and it flowed back and forth, giving off an odor that spoiled the already foul-smelling air. Finally, we reached the Tyumen station, located along the Novosibirsk – Omsk railway, where we were ushered onto three barges, each holding around 400 people, and taken to Tobolsk by river. We were then put in prison no. 5. There were many buildings there, it seems to me that it was a former tsarist prison. One of the buildings had at least 150 cells. Thirty-two of us were put in a 15-square-meter cell. It was terribly airless and had a cement floor. Most people slept on the floor. We were happy enough when they opened the kormushka, a cell window used to give meals. The food was very poor, we had 400 grams of wet, underbaked bread, a bowl of fish soup and a spoonful of groats. There were no interrogations. On 15th August 1941, we were moved to another building and put in cells according to nationality. It was a lot better in there. The cell was not so crowded, the floor was wooden and painted. The influence of the Polish-Soviet agreement was already noticeable.
On 30th August, they started to release us one by one, giving each of us 20 rubles and directing us to the gorsovet [city council] to get a job. Shortly before our release, they carried out an investigation and applied a stat’yu [article] to each of us. They photographed us and took our fingerprints. They must have done it to arrest us again in due time.
Concerning the methods of investigation, Klaudiusz Zwański, a post office worker from Dzisna, told me about these while showing me an enormous lump on the bone just above his knee. It was caused by a kick. He was ordered to face a blood covered wall and threatened with execution. One day he was taken to the forest and ordered to dig a grave. As it all came to nothing, they went back. I speak of this because the man is probably dead now, I heard that he died of typhus in Shahrisabz.
After my release (a half of the Poles were set free by then), without any money and knowing nothing about the Polish Army forming in Russia, I got a menial job as a sailor on a river boat. I continued like this till 15 November 1941. We went to fetch barges of fish far beyond Obdorsk, to the bay of the river Ob. We worked 12 hours per day, loading the firewood onto the ship (100 cubic meters per day). The crew had 36 members, all of whom were Russians, except for four of us Poles. All behaved and spoke decently. All wanted victory over the Germans more than anything else and expected the regime to change. With my 11 companions, I went to Tyumen by car. After a week-long wait at the railway station for tickets, we left Tyumen and went to Barnaul, but they refused to give us tickets to travel further south. We found a Polish colony there, around 2,000 people, all deported from Poland on 20 July 1941. A representative of our embassy advised us against going South, because of the diseases spreading there. I didn’t want to be a burden on my friends, so I got a job in a mill, where I worked till 14 March 1942. As the Soviet authorities in Altai Krai refused to conduct military mobilization, we had to abandon all hope of a mobilization of the Polish Army there. I then gave up the 300 rubles I had earned and went with some colleagues to Lugovoy, where I joined the Polish army.
Quarters, 10 March 1943