1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, occupation, marital status):
Reserve corporal Marian Juralewicz, 30 years old, light machine gun instructor.
2. Date and circumstances of being taken prisoner:
I was taken into Soviet custody on 20 September 1939 in Wilno, and then I was deported to Russia, Smolensk Oblast, Kozelsk town. During the 5-day journey, we were given food only once: 400 grams of bread each and one herring for two persons. Whoever attempted to escape and jumped off the wagon, was either killed or wounded.
In Kozelsk, we spent an entire month in a barrack; they would never let us out, and kept investigating whether we were officers. They gave us half a liter of soup once a day, with no fat at all, and 400 grams of raw bread. We couldn’t lie down to sleep, we had to sleep while standing. And we had unbearable amounts of lice. We wanted to boil our shirts in cauldrons, but we weren’t allowed to – they would knock the cauldrons over with their legs.
3. Name of the camp, prison, forced labor site:
On 19 October 1939, we were taken to Kryvyi Rih, where we got placed around mines and earthworks – digging ditches for water pipes. The quota was eight cubic meters per person, and nobody could fulfil it. They gave us 600 grams of bread and a liter of soup a day. The salary was paid every fifteen days. They called us to give out the money and read out who was to repay them for the food: 30 rubles, 25 rubles etc.
Later, on 21 May 1940, they brought us to the Polish territories, Lwów Voivodeship. The journey took six days, the weather was scorching hot, there were 45 of us in each wagon, windows and doors were locked – there was a lack of air, we would put our faces against the pipes, where our physiological needs would be satisfied, to catch some fresh air. On 27 May, we were shipped around the camps. Zimna Woda camp – they placed us in the stables full of horses and cattle. The former camp chief was Dąbrowski, a Cossack. The work was road construction, no Sunday was free, and whoever didn’t go to work, they would be locked down in the basement and starved. Another camp – Skniłów, where they were building an airport that they didn’t finish, and Hitler came to bomb it. Four of our soldiers were killed, several wounded.
On 26 June [1941], we marched to Russia. We walked 28 days from Lwów to Zlotonosha. The way was really rough, because they didn’t give us any food or drink, and didn’t let us sleep. When someone fainted and dropped on the ground, a boyets stayed with him. As soon as the column got a bit further, you could hear a shot, and then the boyets would keep up alone. We stopped once on the way for a short break in one of the camps. We discovered four murdered fellow POWs in a basement – they wanted to hide under the floor and then run away, but the NKVD men had searched for them, found them, and killed them.
4. Attitude of the local NKVD towards the Poles:
The NKVD men would always say this to a Pole who was dressed in decent clothes: “You bastard, you don’t want to work… you just want to eat bacon”.
5. Medical assistance:
There were no medicines at all, only iodine and a cough relief powder. And if one didn’t run a fever, they would be hustled to go to work even if they were deathly ill.
6. When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?
On 25 August 1941 in Starobilsk, Certified Lieutenant-Colonel Wiszniowski [Wiśniowski] announced that we were allied forces. We went from Starobilsk to Totskoye, being assigned to the 6th Light Artillery Regiment.