1. [Personal data:]
Bombardier Wojciech Siemaszko, age 35, post office clerk, unmarried.
2. [Date and circumstances of arrest:]
Arrested on 19 March 1941, during a night patrol in the dispatch department of the Main Post Office in Wilno.
3–4. [Name of the camp (prison, place of forced labor); description of the camp, prison:]
I was detained in an NKVD prison in Wilno for four weeks, then I was in the Łukiszki Prison [Lithuanian: Lukiškės Prison] until 23 June, after which I was evacuated together with all the prisoners to Gorky and released on 7 September 1941.
The worst conditions were at the NKVD special prison in Wilno (in the cellars of a former municipal court), with its merciless prison rigor and lack of air since the cells didn’t have any, even unintended, air circulation. There was a constant lack of sleep; this was due to the interrogations only ever taking place at night and because you were only allowed to sleep facing the middle of the cell, hands above the sheets, while being covered only to the middle of your chest. If you failed to comply you would be woken up, which didn’t only wake up the one at fault, but everyone in the cell. You could only talk by whispering. There was no daylight and no walks. In the Łukiszki Prison, the rules were more acceptable. The same in Gorky – only it was more crowded and there was less space (a cell for 36 people held 200).
5–6. [The composition of prisoners of war, inmates, exiles; Life in the camp, prison:]
All prisoners I came across in both the NKVD prison in Wilno and in Łukiszki Prison were Polish. Most of them were members of the intelligentsia and former military personnel, some were workers. All of them were political convicts. In the Gorky prison, I came across some Lithuanian political prisoners and a few Ukrainians. In the same prison, I met a group of farmers from Brasław District – arrested the day before the Soviet-German war broke out. They were Polish and Belarussian (Old Believers). The relations with that group were usually proper. The relations between the Polish themselves were not so perfect. Cliques formed, such as sub-officers, officers, and intelligentsia, which often quarreled with one another. The relations became better when the rumors about possible release started going around the prison. At that time some kind of cultural life started to emerge, in the form of discussions about medicine, history, literature, farming, etc. Moreover, a group of elders that represented the Poles appeared in that cell. They were: Father Kucharski, a Jesuit from Wilno; Colonel Wojtkiewicz [illegible] Wilokorski; Captain Zieliński, who later became the commander of the 7th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division; and others.
7. [The NKVD’s attitude towards the Polish people:]
The NKVD’s attitude towards me was the most distressing in the prison in Wilno and while I was being transported from Wilno to Gorky (for 11 days). Interrogations only took place at night. One time, I was brought into [the interrogation] with handcuffs. There wasn’t any particular brutality during the interrogations. I also didn’t witness any particular propaganda or hostility against the Polish or Poland during them.
8. [Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate:]
I didn’t notice any medical assistance in Wilno. Several vaccinations were all there was. While we were being transported, an NKVD doctor called to attend to one of the Lithuanians (madness-related meningitis) refused to provide any aid saying, “ Tak vam vsyem y nada [no use to you anyway].”
9. [Was there any possibility to get in contact with one’s country and family?]
I had no contact with the country since the moment of the arrest.
10. [When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?]
I was released from the prison in Gorky on 7 September 1941. After three months spent in various kolhozes in the south, I was accepted into the army on 15 January 1942 in Buzuluk, as a civil officer in the 4th Staff Unit. Then, on 26 March, on the grounds of a statement from a military medical commission, I was transferred to a guard company in Yangiyul.