1. Name, surname, rank, age, occupation, and marital status:
Kazimierz Fortuna, 23 years old, electrical engineering student, bachelor.
2. Date and circumstances of the arrest:
11 February 1940 at the station in Białystok, by day.
3. Name of the camp, prison or place of forced labor:
Ural–Kizel coal mine.
4. Description of the camp, prison:
Mountainous area, forests. Wooden buildings. We lived in a barrack. Twenty people in one room.
5. Social composition of POWs, prisoners, deportees:
Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Russians. Arrested as “dangerous elements.” The relations were not good.
6. Life in the camp, prison:
We worked in the mine for up to 10 hours. The conditions were tough. Piecework. The remuneration was not enough for us to survive on, and inadequate to the work performed. I received old clothes. No Polish press; propaganda literature and movies.
7. Attitude of the NKVD towards Poles:
The communist propaganda was very strongly developed. If anyone mentioned Poland, they mocked us and our government. They claimed that Poland had collapsed like a house of cards and would never rise again.
8. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality:
There was a doctor, but we suffered because of the lack of medicines. There were cases of death.
9. Was it possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family?
I had no contact with the home country or my family.
10. When were you released and how did you join the army?
I was released at the end of August and I joined the army with the help of the military commissariat.