[1.] Personal details (rank, name and surname, age, occupation, marital status):
Rifleman Franciszek Rodowicz, 30 years old, accountant; marital status: unmarried.
[2.] Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 13 April, 1940, at 12 a.m., I was taken away together with my family. We had three hours to pack. For the most part, the NKVD officers were behaving decently though firmly. The place of the arrest was Lwów, Bilczewskiego Square 11. After a two-day stopover at the station (czerniowiecki railway station) there was an 18-day journey (6,000 kilometers).
[3.] Name of the camp:
Kazakhstan, Semipalatinsk Oblast, Ayagoz region, Karakol, a sheep-raising kolkhoz.
[4.] Description of the camp:
In a steppe. The dwellings were dug-outs. There was a lack of space – four cubic meters for six persons. There wasn’t any household equipment. Beddings were on hay on the ground. Those who had money could rent a government or private apartment for 60–100 rubles a month. The deportees couldn’t use the bathhouse. There were no sanitary facilities. So there were lice and vermin transmitted from the local people.
[5.] Composition of deportees:
Polish people – intelligentsia. Mainly families of civilian officers, police officers and manufacturers. The relations among the deportees were not very decent – even some denunciations occurred – it was so bad that three people went to jail accused of counterrevolution.
[6.] Life in the camp:
We were pasturing sheep from dawn till dusk, we were also haying, milking and shearing sheep. We were paid from four to six rubles a day, however not many of us could meet the quota. We could buy only 400 grams of bread per person for 90 kopecks per kilogram. We couldn’t collect the means for the upkeep of children and persons who couldn’t work.
[7.] The NKVD authorities’ attitude towards the Poles:
As for the Soviet relations, they were bearable. The communist propaganda was insistent – through press, books and meetings, but the Poles were boycotting them.
[8.] Medical care, hospitals, mortality:
The clinic was tended by a midwife. The hospital was far away and it was hard to get there, the food was poor there. In difficult cases there was a modern hospital in Semipalatinsk. Diseases: scurvy and brucellosis transferred from sheep to people. The mortality rate was high, especially among older people who suffered from hunger and emaciation. During the first year of our stay there, around 25 people died from among 300.
[9.] Contact with the country:
Letters and packages were reaching us. Censorship was used only in foreign correspondence.
[10.] When you were released and how did you get to the army?
I was released due to the amnesty almost immediately after it was declared. The Soviet military commission was organized in the town of Ajagud. A Polish military delegate was participating in it. There I got an order to go to Lugovoy, where I could stand before the Polish military draft commission. On 21 February, 1942, I was assigned to the communication battalion of the 10th Infantry Division.
Temporary quarters, 16 January 1943