1. Personal data (name, surname, rank, age, occupation, marital status):
Bombardier Antoni Kamecki, year of birth 1907, worker, married.
2. Date and circumstances of arrest:
On 24 September 1939 I was disarmed by the Soviets in the village of Mokre.
On 28 September I was taken prisoner near Lubliniec, from where I was hustled to Chełm. On 30 September I was loaded on a transport there; they gave me 500 grams of bread and we set off in an unknown direction. The journey lasted four days. In Sarny they ordered us to get out. They gathered a large number of people. I was there for two days, they gave me 1,000 grams of bread and I departed again. Next they told me to get off in Brody, hustled me to get registered, recorded my personal information, and I set off once more. They gave me 500 grams of bread, and I went for another 11 days with that little bread as my only meal.
3. Name of the camp, prison, or forced labor site:
Forced labor camps: Olesko and Skole.
4. Description of the camp, prison:
Olesko – Sobieski’s castle. Skole – wooden barrack. Living conditions were usually poor.
5. Composition of prisoners, POWs, exiles:
Mutual relations were poor. Ukrainians would say that Poles had oppressed them for 20 years and that Poland would be no more.
6. Life in the camp, prison:
Working conditions: from 8 to 10 up to 12 hours of work. Daily quotas were very high. Work was demanding and the quotas were impossible to fill.
7. Attitude of the local NKVD authorities towards the Poles:
Attitude of the NKVD wasn’t positive. Interrogations were frequent and there were ideological communistic lectures (which they forced us to attend after work).
8. Was there any possibility to get in contact with one’s country and family?
Communication with the country was awfully lousy, news from our families was extremely limited.
9. Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate:
Medical care was insufficient; sick people would be forced to go to work running a temperature of 40 degrees Celsius.
In the first camp, the living conditions were awful, and so was clothing. The work was hard – we toiled at road construction. Szymanowicz, who is now in the 9th Regiment, 1st Division, 2nd Battalion, was the combat [battalion commissar] in that camp. He treated people very badly, and if somebody hadn’t gone to work, he would have put them in front of the foreman, and the foreman would put them in the punishment cell.
In the second camp it was slightly better. Living was better, but the work was harder, in the quarries. Daily number of work hours was from 14 to 16 hours.
On the way, while going to Starobilsk, they gave us 4 kilograms of bread and half a kilogram of sugar for every 75 people, once per 24 hours. They were transporting us for 21 days [?], and they didn’t give us anything apart from that. They shot four people on the way, wounding three, and killing one. One person died.
10. When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?
Released [illegible] and accepted into the Polish Army on 1 September 1941, in Starobilsk.
Place of stay, 25 February 1943