[1. Personal data]:
Platoon Commandant Zofia Śliż, born in 1918, scrub nurse, single.
[2. Date and circumstances of the arrest]:
[I was] arrested on 24 January 1940 in Świniowice, near Wilno, for crossing the border. Even though I had formal documents from Warsaw, because I was going on holiday to see my ill father in Wilno, I was arrested.
[3. The name of the camp, prison, or place of forced labor]:
I was taken to Lida [a city in Belarus, in Grodno region], where I spent two weeks in prison; from there I was then taken to Baranowicze [Nowogródek voivodeship] for six months; from Baranowicze, [I was sent] to the prison in Orsha [a city in Belarus, by the Dnieper], then to Sverdlovsk [eastern side of the central Urals]; and from Sverdlovsk, [I was sent] to forced labor camps in Karabas, Kazakhstan.
[4. Description of the camp, prison]:
Conditions in prison were very hard; there was dysentery, no help, and terrible meals – fish soup and 500 grams of bread for the day.
[5. The composition of prisoners, captives, displacees]:
My co-prisoners were Polish, Ukrainians, and Jewish women, imprisoned for belonging to secret organizations or for espionage, allegedly in favor of Germany – runaways from the west. Coexistence was possible.
[6. Life in the camp, prison]:
Clothes were not provided. For forced labor, we irrigated the area; labor was very heavy, the quotas were not feasible, [and] the wage was from two to five rubles a month.
[7. The NKVD authorities’ attitude towards the Poles]:
When, in the name of my companions, I demanded the governor’s inspection, I was put in
detention as a buntowszczyca [rebel]. They always emphasized that Poland would never rise
and that General Sikorski will never come to help us.
[8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality]:
The mortality rate in the prison was low, however, during the epidemic of dysentery, we did not know the mortality rate, because we did not receive any information.
[9. What kind of contact, if any, was there with your family and country?]:
Correspondence from Poland was not delivered in prison; in camps, I received three letters and only a notification about my father’s death.
[10. When were you released and how did you get to the army?]:
I was released at the end of September 1941. On my way to Kostanay [a city in the northern part of Kazakhstan, by the Tobol River], I met a group of gentlemen who were going to Buzuluk [a city in the European part of the USSR, located by the Samara River] and I learned from them about the union of the Polish Army in Buzuluk, where I went with them and enlisted in October 1941, in a sanitary platoon.