1. [Personal data:]
Volunteer Katarzyna Schäfernaker, section leader, age 43, clerk, married.
2. [Date and circumstances of arrest:]
On 3 April 1940 in Czortków, deported.
3. [Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:]
Forced labor, Lenin Sovkhoz, Semipalatinsk Oblast, Novoshulba district, Peschanka village.
4. [Description of the camp, prison:]
A healthy climate. Buildings, housing conditions, and hygiene were partially possible.
5. [The composition of prisoners of war, inmates, exiles:]
There were about 200 families in the sovkhoz, including a dozen Ukrainian families, a few Jewish ones, and the rest were Polish.
6. [Life in the camp, prison:]
Work in the field started at 7:00 AM and lasted until 12:00 PM, and [then] from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM. The work at the pigsty took all day. Wages and food were very poor, and there were no clothes. [There was] no cultural life. People worked and lived from day to day as much as they could.
7. [The NKVD’s attitude towards the Polish people:]
Very often we were asked about our personal data, correspondences, and relatives. Seven or eight people were arrested for not attending work. Three young women were imprisoned for a year because they took a few pieces of wood. A politically suspect railwayman was arrested and never returned. There were also frequent searches in the houses.
8. [Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate:]
Medical assistance was poor. Six children died during the winter, as well as a few (eight)
elderly people (including Lieutenant Colonel Nakoniecznikoff). Fatal accidents: a young man
was hit by a tractor and a woman was hit by a car.
9. [Was there any possibility to get in contact with one’s country and family?]
Contact with the country was possible through letters, parcels, and sending money.
10. [When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?]
I was released in August 1941, due to the amnesty [for Polish citizens in the Soviet Union]. I joined the army in Tehran through the draft commission on 27 October 1942.
Place of stay, 24 January 1943