Sergeant Franciszek Szczepański, 35 years old, contract instructor, married.
I was disarmed on 18 September 1939 in Łuck. Then [I was sent] to Czerlany, where I worked at the airport.
There were about 6000 of us, 50 percent of whom were Jews, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. The other 50 percent were Polish people. The intellectual level was very low, but the morale of the Poles was very high. Later on, the national minorities came to their senses and joined our side.
The relations between the Soviets were as follows. If someone was not a supporter of the Soviets, they did not receive anything from them. There were cases when prisoners walked barefoot and half naked, but they had to go to work because if they didn’t, the foreman would lock them up in a punishment cell as rebels. We were woken up at 4.00 a.m. or earlier; at 5.15 we marched off to work, regardless of temperature and weather.
We walked 14 kilometers to work, with our hands behind us. The escorts would write down the names of those who did not work and hand them over to political commissars. Then, they were locked in punishment cells for the whole night. Several days in a row, we were woken up in the morning and sent off to work without breakfast. When we were returning from work, kombats caught prisoners already at the gate and took them straight to punishment cells, where they were given only 400 grams of bread. When the temperature fell to 40 degrees below zero and the POWs went out half barefoot, without gloves, the crowbars would freeze to their hands. In order to meet the work quota, we had to retrieve 190 centimeters of stone and 12 cubic meters of sand from a four-meter deep pit. Plus 25 batches of concrete, [illegible] stone for each batch, two wheelbarrows of sand, and 25 kilograms of cement.
Remuneration: from 12 to 18 rubles, and a bonus for food, for which we had to pay the Soviets. The food was distributed from cauldrons. The first cauldron was the worst: it was for those who did not meet the work quota; the second one was for those who met 75 percent of the work quota, and the third one was for those who met 100 percent of it. Those who met over 100 percent of the quota received additional food. In the first cauldron, there was thin soup, almost without any fat.
The attitude of the NKVD towards the Poles may be reflected by a fact that I will describe. After the outbreak of the German-Russian war, during the evacuation of POWs, a man, whose name I cannot recall, was wounded. When the commission arrived, he was asked how he had been wounded. When he replied that he was injured by a boyet [soldier], the NKVD commander took out his revolver. The man was shot dead for that. They sent us to work on Sundays and holidays on purpose, regardless of the weather. If someone did not work, they were starved as punishment when there was snow outside and 25 degrees below zero. If a soldier stood up to warm himself, they would beat him and stab him with bayonets, or aim their rifles to shoot him. They would tear the eagles off of our hats and lock us in cells in uniforms and pants. If we complained that we had too little food, we were locked in punishment cells for as long as 20 days.
Only brave communists received letters from home. Letters addressed to others were intercepted and burned.
I was released from the camp in Starobilsk, and it was there where I joined the Polish army.
17 February 1943