1. Personal details (name, surname, rank, military mail no., age, profession and marital status):
Rifleman Zygmunt Filipek, II / III, 28 years old, local government bookkeeper, single.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 28 September 1939 [I was] arrested by the NKVD authorities and immediately accused of being the commander of the Polish Youth Union, a member of the Polish intelligence and of persecuting and fighting young communists, members of the so-called Komsol. Furthermore [I was accused] of being in touch with the State Police.
3. Name of camp, prison or place of forced labour:
85.10.22 – AKMSRR [?] colony, Drohiczyn prison, Minsk district, Vitebsk, Veliky Luki, Moscow (Lubianka prison).
4. Description of the camp, prison etc. (terrain, buildings, living conditions, hygiene):
Living, hygiene and health conditions were terrible in every sense of the word. The rooms in the prisons were disproportionate to the number of those arrested, and because of this the prisoners simply suffocated in their cells.
5. Composition of prisoners, POWs, exiles (nationality, category of crime, intellectual and moral level, interpersonal relations etc.):
Russians from different republics, Poles, Spaniards from the last revolution, Germans from Soviet territory. Mostly political criminals were locked up there. High intellectual level, i.e. on average, they had secondary or higher education. Morality was proportionate to their intelligence. Our relations were normal, rather polite, just like in prison. It is characteristic that no one believed they would return home, despite having served their sentence for this and that [illegible].
6. Life in the camp, prison etc. (daily routine, working conditions, quotas, remuneration, food, clothing, social and cultural life):
A normal day began at 5.00 a.m. After breakfast, we went to work. This would last until 7.00 p.m., with an hour’s lunch break. We received remuneration, but it was just [illegible] and never de facto. The food was dependent on the level of work and its execution in a given colony. Social life hardly existed other than people would gather together at work in small groups to do a job faster or to support someone who was faltering. Essentially, every individual fought for his existence in a way that suited him, completely understandably. There was some cultural life depending—like the food—on the particular colony, i.e. a colony that managed to fulfil the plan imposed upon it had everything in greater quantities than others.
7. NKVD authorities’ conduct towards the Poles methods of interrogation, torture, punishment, communist propaganda, information about Poland etc.):
The Poles were generally considered dangerous people. They were well remembered from 1920. Then, from an economic point of view, they were seen as good, free workers, which is common in the USSR. The interrogation was rather inept, and in any case it was a formal matter. Torture was rare, and was only applied to people who were really [illegible] and those who could have [illegible]. The punishment inflicted was standard, except for the so-called O.S. [illegible] from three to five or eight to ten years. Communist propaganda and news about Poland were so inept, scandalous and unsubstantiated by evidence that they were always taken in a completely different way, and we later made propaganda unconsciously when talking about Poland.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality (surnames of the dead):
Medical assistance was the best organized compared to other matters – ie. outside prison, when [illegible] depended on the authorities rather than the doctors themselves, it was perfectly understandable, which explains the doctors and their behavior towards patients.
9. Was there any communication with homeland and family? If so, how was it?
The only communication was via people who were later arrested and imprisoned or deported to gulags.
10. When were you released and how did you reach the army?
I was released on 1 September 1941, after the [Polish-Soviet] agreement was formulated and signed. I did not join the army until 5 March 1942 purely due to formalities and the fact that I was sick for one and a half months.
Army base, 13 February 1943.