1. [Personal details:]
Volunteer Jadwiga Owsianik, born on 15 October 1922 in Wilno voivodeship.
2. [Date and circumstances of arrest:]
Deported to the USSR on 10 February 1940, along with her family (four people).
3. [Name of the camp, prison, or forced labor site:]
We lived in a rural settlement, in barracks in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Rewda region, in the town of Dziechciarka [Diegtiarsk?].
6.[ Life in the camp, prison:]
I was working in a copper mine together with my sister, the pay was very small, we were buying food for the money we earned working and selling our belongings.
7. [The NKVD’s attitude towards Poles:]
They used to give us fines or send us to hard labor for coming to work late, or for not coming at all.
8. [Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate:]
There was hardly any medical assistance because they wouldn’t admit that anyone was sick. We had to work till we were completely exhausted.
9. [Was there any chance to get in contact with one’s country and family?]
We had contact with our family, they helped us out the best they could.
10. [When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?]
I was released in August 1941. In October we left Ural and went to Uzbekistan. We heard a lot about the Polish Army that was gathering in Buzuluk. My sister and I, we wanted to join the army. My father couldn’t due to his age and state of health. After we joined the Women’s Auxiliary Service, we got typhus, my sister died and at the same time the Uzbeks killed my father in the kolkhoz. When my father died, my mother came to Kytab [Kitob], where there were social services, because it was hard being alone in the kolkhoz.
She left Russia with the first wave of transportees, she’s in Africa now.