1. Personal data:
Corporal Franciszek Sebik, born in 1895, clerk, married.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
I was taken captive by the Bolsheviks on 19 September 1939 in Korolówka, near Tłumacz [Tlumach], together with a supply unit of the Podhale group, which was formed in Brzeżany. The commander of the supply unit was Lieutenant Mucha.
3. Name of the camp:
Sokół in Tłumacz;
kolkhoz stables in Wołoczyska [Volochysk];
military barracks in Nowogród Wołyński [Novohrad-Volynskyi];
barracks belonging to the Margań [?] ore mine in Ukraine;
camp for zaklyuchennyy [prisoners] in the north in The Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist
Republic, 255 km north-east of Kotlas.
4. Description of the camp:
[Regarding] temporary camps one to three, where I stayed for a few or more days: there was hunger, lack of space, and dirt everywhere. Because people ate what[ever] they got into their hands (raw beets), in Wołoczyska there were a few cases of death from dysentery.
[Regarding number] four: housing conditions were bearable, but they forced us to carry out heavy work in ore mines and to clean and load cars. There were several deaths.
[Regarding number] five: Tree barracks in the forests in the north, surrounded with a high fence and barbed wire. At the corners there were watchtowers (“crows’ nests”). In the barracks there were bunk beds, dirt everywhere, various insects, as well as mice and rats.
5. The composition of prisoners of war:
Nationality, mental and moral standing, and the relationship of prisoners with one another was similar to an average military unit.
6. Life in the camp:
We had to wake up early in the morning, get clean, dress up, then eat breakfast and march out for work when it was just before dawn; we came back to the camp at night. It was tough work; in winter there was lots of snow and frost dropping down to minus 55 degrees Celsius, in summer unprecedented swarms of mosquitoes and other insects, which bit terribly. All prisoners were divided into groups according to the medical commission’s decision, namely: 1) hard work, 2) medium work, and 3) light work. I [was classified under] light work and I had to make at least 26% [of the working quotas] at first, and then it was increased to 36%. If someone did not meet this working standard, they would be locked up for the night in prison (tiurma) and taken to work again during the day, until they finally made the minimum.
For this work I received 600 [g], and later only 500 g of bread, and twice a day, morning and evening, a little bit of watery soup. I was wearing my own clothes, and only when winter came, when I couldn’t wear it anymore, I received deplorable Soviet clothes.
There was almost no social and cultural life, as the Bolsheviks paid close attention to it. It was only in secret that groups gathered in barracks to tell one another about the stories heard somewhere during the work (especially from the railwaymen), which, as it turned out later, were true.
7. The NKVD’s attitude towards the Polish people:
When it comes to investigations and searches, they were mostly carried out at night. They threatened with a prosecution officer, with shooting [you] down, they locked prisoners up in a cold, barely heated prison, and they did not allow you to take a blanket. In every camp, there was, as it was called, a “political indoctrinator”, whose task was to spread Communist propaganda. There was no information about Poland, apart from the constant repeated statements that Poland no longer existed.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate:
There was a doctor in the camp who was constantly lacking the most basic medicines and medical supplies, and who had limited ability to dismiss people from work (as far as I remember, two percent). Scurvy, night blindness, boils, and frostbites were commonplace. Very serious cases were taken to the hospital or temporarily held in a camp’s infirmary. Those who were less ill, due to the limited possibilities of the doctor, had to go to work, because he did not recognize them as sick. I cannot say what the death rate was in the camp because, as I have already mentioned, serious cases were sent to the hospital and the patient did not always return to the same camp. I do not remember death cases in the camp itself, but I do remember that a strelok [commanding officer of a platoon] shot down a Polish man, whose name I do not remember, at work.
9. Was there any possibility to get in contact with one’s country and family?
I personally did not receive any news from my family, although I wrote directly to them many times, and several times through the Polish Red Cross.
10. When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?
On 15 July 1941, the Soviet authorities loaded us aboard a train and in closed, heavily guarded cars, they brought us to a military camp near Wiaźniki [Vyazniki] (between Moscow and Gorky), where we were kept again in a closed camp and under guard. In the first days of August, the Soviet authorities announced to us the content of the agreement concluded between Poland and the USSR and announced the formation of a Polish army in the USSR. On 26 August, Colonel Sarnowski, on behalf of the Commander of the Army (currently the Commander of the 13th Infantry Regiment of the 5th Infantry Division), came to the camp. On 27 August, there was a medical review of the army, where I was declared capable of military service. In the first days of September 1941, I arrived by train to Tatishchevo, as the first transport to the 5th Infantry Division, which was to be formed there under the command of General Boruty-Spiechowicz, and then I was assigned to the 14th Infantry Regiment of the 5th Infantry Division.
Place of stay, 24 January 1943