Maria Rudowska, born on 25 May 1917 in Końskie, daughter of Szymon and Antonina Różańska, unmarried.
On 30 December 1939 I was arrested at the border and put in prison. I was kept in Przemyśl for three months.
The conditions were terrible. 20 women were kept in a three-by-three-meter cell, sometimes there were even 40 of us, depending on how many had been caught. We slept on a dirty floor, where there were a lot of lice and bugs. The food consisted of 100 grams of bread and some watery soup for lunch. We’d be called up for interrogation at night and tortured for several hours. Some of us came back so exhausted that they could barely speak.
After three months, we were taken away to Mikołajewo. The conditions were better over there, but the interrogations were worse. They’d call us up nearly every day and they’d use every possible way to try to get something out of us. Every one of us was treated as a spy, we went through real torture. After six months I was taken away to the Yaya station, Novosibirsk Oblast, to a labor camp for a period of five years.
In the camp, I worked very hard for 14 hours a day. The food was bad: 400 grams of bread and some soup which was impossible to eat. We were treated very badly. They tried to harass us at every opportunity. They would constantly tell us: “Poland will be no more! You’re going to die here!” Two women died of typhus (I don’t remember their names) due to a lack of medical assistance. Only those whose body temperature reached 38.5 degrees Celsius were taken to the hospital.
I had no contact with my family, as we were not allowed to send letters to Poland.
Released on 1 September [1941], I went to the town of Andrejka, where I worked in a kolkhoz. I had to move on in November, as there were no more jobs there. We were simply kicked out. I went to Nurota, where I worked as a dishwasher in the kitchen. In March, I left for Tehran with the families. That’s where I joined the Polish Army on 20 May [1942].