1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, Field Post Office number, age, occupation, marital status):
Corporal Emanuel Pyliński, worker at a co-operative, unmarried, no. 60/III, FPO no. 160.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was arrested on 3 May 1940. At 3.00 a.m., NKVD men came to my flat gun in hand and threatened to shoot me should I make a move. They carried out a search, handcuffed me and didn’t let me take anything.
3. Name of the camp, prison or forced labor site:
They transported me to the Białystok prison, where I was incarcerated for 12 months, that is, until 12 April 1941, at which point I was deported to a forced labor camp in Komi ASSR, the Vorkuta camp, where I had to work as a prisoner until the signing of the agreement with Poland.
4. Description of the camp, prison etc. (grounds, buildings, housing conditions, hygiene):
The prison was Polish, but a cell that had held 28 people before now held 136 prisoners. The beds from that prison had been taken to Russia, and the prisoners had to sleep on a concrete floor, with nothing to put under themselves. The cell was cramped like a beehive and very close. We didn’t have any walks in the open air at all, there was no bathhouse and water was always in short supply; any soap was out of the question, and lice swarmed in the cell like ants. In the camp there was a wooden barrack, but snow and wind got through the cracks; water was always frozen, we slept on bare boards and wore the rags and tatters of what we had put on our backs when still in Poland. In order to get warm, we built a fire in the middle of the barrack, and the smoke provided some heat.
5. The composition of POWs, prisoners, exiles (nationality, categories of crimes, intellectual and moral standing, mutual relations etc.):
In the prison there were Poles incarcerated for disloyalty to the imposed principles of Communism, and there were also those who were earmarked for extermination because they would never agree to a system that meant the destruction of scientific achievements and morality. The majority of prisoners had a higher education and high morals.
6. Life in the camp, prison, etc. (the course of an average day, working conditions, quotas and norms, wages, food, clothing, social and cultural life):
On average, we worked anywhere from 12 to 18 hours per day. Work quotas: loading coal onto wagons – 49 tons; unloading – 59 tons. Those who didn’t manage to meet the quota received 350 grams of bread and two liters of hot water, while those who did – 600 grams of bread and a liter and a half of runny soup with no fat. There was no remuneration. Uniforms – there were nothing but rags in the camp, so we were numb with cold. Social life with the Russian criminals was unbearable; if you had received bread and saved it for the morning, they would steal it from you, so you had to survive all day without food.
7. The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles (interrogation methods, torture and other forms of punishment, Communist propaganda, information about Poland, etc.):
Interrogations were often accompanied by beating and followed by incarceration in the punishment cell. The latter punishment lasted from a few days to a month (with a short break); the floor in that cell was flooded with up to 10 centimeters of water and there was no light. As for food, the prisoner received 200 grams of bread and one quarter of a liter of hot water per day; it was cold and generally it was impossible to get any sleep, apart from the eternal slumber. They made up charges and forced you to plead guilty to them. If you denied them instead, you were placed in the punishment cell or even shot. Sergeant Lech from the 40th Infantry Regiment, who didn’t sign his charges, was executed by firing squad. As a result of lice-infestation, a typhus epidemic broke out in the prison. On 31 May 1940, there were 8,000 prisoners, and after the epidemic – 6,000. As I learned later, 2,000 people had died of typhus.
8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate (provide the surnames of those who perished):
I know the following surnames: Franciszek Zieliński, Feliks Kopacz, Wacław Anszad; we saw that from 30 to 50 corpses were being taken out every day to the dead room. They passed sentences in absentia, from 5 to 25 years or capital punishment. When we were transported to the camps in cargo wagons, [illegible] searches and we were kept out in the cold for about an hour, completely naked. We were fed with salty fish and didn’t get any water. During the transport, Szewczyk from Łódź and Aloszym [?] from Białystok died. At the camp, one man took two steps outside of the zone and was shot dead; they wrote a warning in red pencil that those who took one step outside would meet the same fate. Those who didn’t listen to the communist propaganda received another sentence. They told us that we would never see Poland again, that Sikorski had taken all the gold to England and that he was sitting there on a bench in the park, and so we would perish in prisons unless we changed our minds.
Medical assistance was provided only for the sake of appearances and propaganda.
9. Was there any possibility of getting in contact with one’s country and family?
Political prisoners weren’t allowed to write to the home country and to their families. We had news only from people who came in transports from Poland at a later time, but I didn’t have any news concerning my family.
10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?
I was released from [illegible] when the Polish-Soviet agreement was signed. After my release, I was given a choice: join the Red Army or go for free labor. They didn’t tell me that the Polish Army was being raised, but I learned along the way that there was a Polish post in Buzuluk, so I went there and was admitted. My journey lasted from 15 September to 15 October 1941; I didn’t receive anything for the journey, I had to survive by my own wits. They did this on purpose, to make it more difficult for us to reach our authorities.
16 March 1943
I am appending a description of the elections.
Two months before the elections, political commissars came to cities, towns and villages to conduct a campaign; they said that there was no justice in Poland, that a landowner could kill a peasant and bear no responsibility, that in the Soviet Union everybody could go to school free of charge, that there was equal pay for a laborer and a person working in the highest office, that the lower orders were not taken advantage of, and that this wasn’t to be found in any bourgeois state, only in the Soviet Union was there justice and equality for all classes, and that we could vote for whomever we wanted. When the day of the elections came, they appointed candidates and told us to vote. Those who didn’t vote were arrested. If you were sick, a politrabotnik [political worker] would come, give you a ballot and order you to put it in the box, and there was a soldier with a rifle by that box. If someone crossed out or tore the ballot, he was arrested on the spot.
I am also submitting a description of delivering judgements. Two NKVD men were sitting at the table, and the third, a higher ranking NKVD official, read out a verdict that had been passed in absentia: “Osobaya [illegible] osudit tiebia zaochno srok 5 – 8 – 10 let ispravitel’no- trudovye lagerya kak sotsial’no opasnyy element dlya Sovetskogo Soyuza, pochatok kary od dnya wyroka” [sentenced to 5 – 8 – 10 years of Gulag camps as a “socially resistant” element, with the punishment beginning on the day the sentence was delivered]. They ordered you to sign it, and such a verdict was legally binding.