Volunteer Leokadia Pelipczak, born on 27 December 1919, unskilled. Before the war I lived in Ratno, Kovel district, Wołyń Voivodeship. HQ platoon, under the Command of Staging Area A.
I was arrested on 27 December 1939 for having signed up for emigration to German- occupied territory. After my arrest, I was taken to Brześć nad Bugiem, where I stayed until 13 November 1940. The conditions were terrible. For two months, men and women were imprisoned together in a 16-square-meter cell. There were 90 people in total. We got nothing more to eat than 400 grams of bread and water. Two months later, I was taken to another prison in Brześć, where men were separated from women and where I got a cooked meal for the first time. There were 17 people in a four-meter-square cell. Every week, they searched us thoroughly and put us in different cells. During all this time, they did not let us out to get some fresh air. On 15 November 1940, I was sentenced to 5 years of labor and deported to a penal labor camp in Mordovska SSR.
For three months I worked in the forest and cut down stumps and trees. Then, I was taken to another camp, where I worked in a sewing manufacture until the amnesty. In this place, there were 40,000 of us Polish women and 3,000 Russian women. Only on 13 October 1941 was I released from the camp and given a referral to Stalingrad, where I got a job in a butchery.
On 1 February 1942, I left for Kuybyshev. The local Polish embassy directed me to the Polish Army in Chapak [Chokpak].
I arrived in Chapak on 23 March, and immediately after my registration I left for Krasnovodsk with the 8th Division, and then to Pahlavi.
I arrived in Tehran on 4 April 1943, and on 11 June I joined the Women’s Auxiliary Service.