Rafał Rechowicz, gunner, born in 1916, civil servant, married.
I was arrested on 14 June 1941 in Wilno. My wife came home during the search so we were both deported. We were sent to the Ust´-Charyshskaya Pristan settlement near the Aleysk station in Altai Krai. We were deported in a group of 150 people, mostly women and children. The raion town, located on the Ob River, gave us some work opportunities: the men went into woodworking and the women into sewing, making mats and mending sacks. Relations with the locals were positive. After a month we could be described as a relatively organized group, with the exception of some people and families that got work in hotels [?], but we did keep in touch with them too. The group I’m referring to consisted of around 15 men who hired themselves out for various jobs. Because two men in the group were combat engineers with some knowledge of carpentry, we could get enough work to stay afloat. Besides that we were men of varied professions. The farmers joined our work group after the harvest. Some took on jobs requiring technical expertise they could not deliver on, which led to difficulties for others seeking work later on. The pay was small compared to the high prices. The living conditions were decent: we had rooms with floors and beds, and lived seven to eight people per room. Everyone got bread – 700 or 600 grams at first, then 400. Those who worked got 800 grams each.
The NKVD gave us no trouble then; it was the period right after the signing of the [Polish- Soviet] agreement.
Medical care was available insofar as there was a Polish doctor at the local hospital and two women from our group worked there as nurses.
We had no contact with the home country. In January we left, along with two families from our group, to Ushtobe in the Almaty Oblast. We chose this place ourselves and the NKVD approved the move. There, work was very hard to come by. There were many people; some worked in the local kolkhozes and they were in a relatively good position to survive. This is where we first heard about the army being formed up. [Despite?] two official dispatches to the army, addressed to the voyenkomat [army draft board], the NKVD didn’t give me permission, so I couldn’t leave. My further attempts in regard to this were futile.
The Poles were just beginning to get organized; help started coming in from branch offices. Relations with the locals were unfriendly and living conditions bad – we lived in hovels. Life was hard.
Two months later I got a job at the Almaty Polish Delegation branch office and was sent, three weeks thereafter, to the Lenin Raion in the Jalalabad Oblast as a trusted representative of the branch office in Almaty. Here, life was the hardest for people despite the assistance of the army. Bread rations for those who worked were 200–300 grams, whereas those who didn’t work got nothing. Living conditions were bad and relations with the Kyrgyz people even hostile. There was no help from the authorities. We couldn’t even secure a horse to transport a sick person. Children fell ill from hunger. The only men left were either those unfit for military service or family breadwinners. In the final months before my departure, the ethnically Polish people living in the area subsisted mostly on [Polish] government assistance.
I joined the army in August 1942, having been released from my responsibilities to the branch office.
Encampment, 1 March 1943