1. Personal data:
Volunteer Janina Podlewska, born on 25 July 1922, no profession, unmarried.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested on 2 March 1940 in Lwów. My father and mother were arrested with me. The charge was working in a secret organization.
3. Name of the camp, prison or forced labor site:
My investigation lasted nine months. During this entire time they took me from one prison to another. On 19 November 1940 I stood trial in the “Krakowski” Hotel in Lwów. In the final hearing I was sentenced to six years in prison and five years of exile. In February 1941 I was deported to Kharkiv, where I was kept until my release.
4. Description of the camp, prison:
The conditions were terrible. 36 people were incarcerated in a small cell. The window, which was small, was covered up with a metal sheet and a grate with a net. It completely blocked the air. In winter, it was terribly cold on the concrete, and in summer we were dying of heat. In this tiny room there stood a parashka, and next to it was a bucket with water and some dishes.
5. The composition of prisoners of war, inmates, exiles:
I met all sorts of people in the prison. There were cells in which Ukrainian nationalists constituted the majority, and these women were hostile. In other cells I was the only political prisoner among prostitutes. There were also cells where many members of our intelligentsia were incarcerated, and these ladies took care of me and always tried to act as substitute mothers.
6. Life in the camp, prison:
Each day in prison began with a wake-up at 2.00 a.m. for opravka, and then we had breakfast – “tea” and a tiny piece of bread, and sometimes a lump of sugar. Then at 11.00 a.m. there was another opravka and dinner – “running soup” [watery soup] – and the same was repeated in the evening. We weren’t allowed to sleep, and there was nothing else to do. It was cramped – we had to sit with our legs pulled up to our chins. The guard on duty yelled at those who napped.
7. The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles:
Interrogations were most torturous. They tormented the prisoners in a most vicious manner, by incarceration in punishment cells, filled knee-deep with water; by beating, dislocating joints in arms and legs, driving wood splinters under nails and using many other methods. The punishment cells were completely devoid of air, so that the cigarettes and matches that we had saved up by some miracle wouldn’t light. The Bolsheviks said horrible things about our country. They said that it would never be reborn. They said that there was cold and hunger in Poland, that there weren’t any schools and other similar claptrap.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate:
I was very ill while in prison, so I often lay in the hospital. I suffered from both typhus and typhoid fever and many other diseases. The doctor would show up only if the patient was almost in his death throes. In the prison hospital the lack of medicaments was acutely felt; only if the nurse happened to be a Pole did we have better medical assistance.
9. Was there any possibility of getting in contact with one’s country and family?
I didn’t have any contact with our country because they didn’t let us write home.
10. When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?
I was released on 29 September 1941 and went to Tatishchevo with a whole group of political prisoners, and on 13 October 1941 I was admitted into the Women’s Auxiliary Service in Buzuluk.
Place of stay, 5 February 1943