Bronisław Suświłło, corporal.
On 24–25 September 1939 – after the fall of the Polish [illegible], when I became a soldier without a unit or any command – I was arrested on the Włodawa–Małoryta highway; I became a POW. We were force marched to Małoryta and told to sit down next to the fence of some garage; we were warned that if anyone got up, they’d open fire on us. At approximately 2.00 a.m. we were herded into that garage. On the morning of the next day, they subjected us to a thorough search: they took away our belts, matches, razorblades, knives, personal band aid kits and money in any amount above 200 złotys. Once that was concluded, we were marched off to the nearest train station and loaded into train cars. We travelled through Brześć and Baranowicze into Russia – the train stopped at the Goreloye [?] station and we stood there [illegible]. We received no food. There were (as far as I know) 4,800 people in that train, in groups of 40 in each 16-ton car and 80 in each 30-ton one. At noon on the fourth day, we were unloaded from the train and herded into a kolkhoz stable building; we were packed in it so tightly that we didn’t have the space to sit, much less lie down. On the next day we were issued some bread – one loaf per eight people – boiled water and some salted fish – [illegible] per 8 people. We received these rations for three days. Then, we were loaded back onto the train and they [illegible] transfer us to Minsk. But something must’ve happened because they turned us back.
We waited one more day, after which were taken to Baranowicze and released – a train with coal hopper cars came, we were loaded onto it and sent back to Lida and Wilno.
They treated us the way Soviets usually treat Poles. As far as I know, six people died during that period, one man was executed. While all this was happening, we saw transports carrying various equipment and [illegible] in broken down Polish vehicles. I returned home in the first half of October. On 14 June 1941, a prison car with four NKVD men and two civilians from the executive committee arrived at the Szukiszki farmstead of the Suświłło family (Niemenczyn Commune, Wilno-Trocki District, Wilno Voivodeship). They immediately set about locating the family members and acquiring a written report about where they worked. A car was sent to get them and bring them to the house. Once the family members arrived, a thorough search was conducted but nothing was found. Then the Soviets said that men were to get dressed – not women – because they wanted to take the men separately from the women, but the women made such a ruckus that the Soviets eventually relented and let us all go together. They let the family take 20 kilograms of luggage per person. The family members were Edward Suświłło (father, aged 73) and Izabela (mother, aged 58); sons: Bronisław Jan (born in 1908), Jan (born in 1910), and Stefan (born in 1925); daughters: Maria (born in 1922), and Janina (born in 1923); daughter-in-law Jadwiga (born in 1916); as well as Jadwiga (born in 1920), Władysław (born in 1939) and Rozalia (born in 1914). They were all arrested for being landowners. Notably, sometime before the arrest, in May 1941, large taxes were placed on us: we were ordered to deliver 4,222 kilograms of grain and threatened that anyone who didn’t pay would be deported. It turned out that compliance didn’t matter because we delivered as required but were deported anyway; the threats were just a tool to squeeze out all they could from the people.
The deportation took place as follows: seven people were taken in the prison car that had arrived, leaving behind my father and my sister-in-law with a child. Then two other vehicles were sent to take the remaining people and things. We were driven to the market square in Niemenczyn, where they drew up some documents and sent us away to Nowa Wilejka. There, train cars were already waiting for the deportees. 47 people were loaded into our train car, in which the living space and toilet were not separated. There was lots of traffic on the roads – carts and taxis went hither and thither, carrying all the spoils acquired by the Soviets. The first deportation transport left at 3.00 a.m. on 15 June, ours on 3.00 p.m. that day, and four others were still waiting as we left. We travelled by rail through Mołodeczno, Wilejka, the Minsk District, Orsha, Vologda, Omsk and Novosibirsk, and arrived on 2 July at the Bol´shaya Rechka station in the Troitskiy Raion. While on the way, we were fed as follows: where food was available, it consisted of bread and some form of groats, but no meals were provided on the last two days of the journey. After arrival in Troitskoye, we were again subjected to numerous searches. Our family was assigned to an industrial kolkhoz. They took us there by car on the evening of 3 July. In the kolkhoz we were given 3 kilograms of bread and relatively decent quarters: two rooms and a kitchen in a wooden building with whitewashed interior walls. The rooms were furnished with 14 cots made out of wooden planks. Why 14? As we learned later from the locals, they made these on 25 May because they were expecting our whole family. There were actually 14 of us in the family but not all were home during the deportation proceedings, as some had been taken to do forced labor.
Incidentally, while we were being taken from our house, the Soviets immediately started evaluating our remaining possessions – both objects and livestock. They gave our neighbor the task of selling it all and she was supposed to send us the money from the sale, which we never received. We rested for a day after arriving at the kolkhoz, but the locals weren’t allowed to visit us at that point – visits and meetings were generally prohibited. On the following day, the head of the kolkhoz showed up at our house, listed the laws of the kolkhoz and said: “You are subject to this law. Today we’ll go and see what the work looks like.”
We were first assigned to work [illegible] and did this for three days, whereas the women were sent to work in the fields: weeding millet, raking hay and such. After three days, I and my brother were reassigned to help with the construction of a house and a wood tar production facility; we worked for 14 hours a day, till 20 October, as wood haulers. We were promised generous pay but were initially only paid an advance – the accounts were settled upon our departure. The pay amounted to 133 rubles a month. The women and my other brother (who later died) were paid from 50 to 70 rubles a month. As daily rations the two of us received 500 grams of bread, the women got 300 grams each, whereas dad and mom got 100 grams each. These amounts were maintained until September. Notably, we had to pay a set government price for the food. From 1 September onwards, we were issued food based on ration cards. The rations were 16 grams of millet per person per day and 16 kilograms of potatoes a week. The price for the millet was 80 kopeks per kilogram and for the potatoes 30 [rubles] per kilogram. There was a span of two days when we, the two brothers that worked in the woods, got no bread. The women received dinners in the field; these cost from 80 kopeks to 1 ruble 20 kopeks per serving and usually consisted of soup made with either millet or potatoes. The locals were very sympathetic to our plight so they’d usually eke something out – some vegetables or milk – and sell that to us at discounted prices. They always sighed and said they understood us well because the same thing had happened to them: they too had been driven away from their land and deported (or dekulakized in Soviet parlance). Their attitude towards us was very positive in general.
After we spent some more time with each other and grew more familiar, they started telling us all that they’d be ready to fight Stalin at any opportunity and when we were leaving they put it like this: “We know where you’re going – to the Polish Army – but do not forget that we would always go with you.” I was not officially informed about the amnesty for Poles – one day we just got word from the Poles working in another kolkhoz, 6 kilometers away, that they’re leaving and they’re free. This news reached me through my sisters. I spoke to the foreman and chewed him out for not telling us, then I went to the raion authorities to learn more. Many of our people were in the raion town, all getting ready to leave. That was a few days after 15 September and on Tuesday a transport of 300 people did leave. I was briefed by our people about the situation and our circumstances, then went back to the kolkhoz and chewed out the head of the kolkhoz for not telling us anything about all this.
He replied that he did not want to lose workers and began pleading with us to stay, promising to make all the arrangements to make us comfortable in winter if we stayed.
Our friends, in contrast, told us “Ne ostavaytes, a poezhzayte, khuzhe vam ne budet, poedete do armii polskey i nas spasyote” [Do not stay – go; you won’t be worse off, you’ll join the Polish Army and you’ll save us].
We decided to go south because down there were some other Poles we had made contact with (in the forest around 40 kilometers away). My wife and I went on foot to their place and they sent a delegation to Novosibirsk to get some train cars; I went with them. We got to Novosibirsk and spent three days there, unable to leave. We ascertained that we could only get train cars for a journey if we paid for them ourselves. The group agreed to that arrangement and the cost came out to 57 rubles per person. One train car could accommodate 33 people. They were obviously cargo cars: 16 and 18-ton ones. We had our own food at that point – according to the kolkhoz authorities we were owed nothing because we didn’t work. They only lent us some horses to get to the train station. The locals, whom we had befriended, brought us whatever they could spare, saying: “You’ll need everything on the way.”
The Komsomol youth, who are supposedly the best among the Soviets, got so attached to us that it’s… They came to believe that the world was better outside of Soviet control rather than within their grasp. And thus, on 21 or 22 October we left the Chapayev kolkhoz in the Petrovskiy village council, Troitskiy Raion, Barnaul Oblast, Altai Krai. It was a bad time in our lives and yet we had won the locals over so completely that they’d have followed us anywhere. We paid for the train to take us to Samarkand, but they actually drove us to the Andijan Oblast – specifically to the Grunch-Mazar railway station in the raion town of Jalalquduq [arrival on 2 November?]. There, we had to leave the train whether we wanted to or not and, while carts were provided to take us further on, the Uzbeks were quite eager to keep us as kolkhoz workers. We – that is four families travelling together – did not agree to go just like that. We demanded: “You must guarantee to give us all the bread and groats we’d need to keep ourselves fed.” This didn’t work and they wanted to threaten us into compliance instead. We told them that now we didn’t believe the threats they were making; they wanted to arrest us. Ultimately, we talked ourselves out of all this by pointing out that we were granted an amnesty and were subjects of an official agreement with the Soviets. The police that was supposed to arrest us was Uzbek, so we got off scot-free.
But they left us right then and there under some fence. We sat around for about two weeks, then started looking for work.
We found it at a local hay procurement point, but we still had no living quarters. After lots of pleading, the manager of the procurement point let us lead the cow and horse belonging to the local machine driver out of the place they were housed in and use that space. The room was four by seven meters.
We lived there in a 20-person group. We built in one brick wall, made a door out of reeds and some cots to sleep in. Others [slept] on the ground. It was quite comfortable because there were huge stacks of hay that we used both for bedding and heating. This was also where the men worked, i.e. their living quarters were right next to their work area. The women went to work in a khlopok zagotpunkt [cotton procurement point], while the men worked specifically in hay pressing – they hauled the hay to the train cars. It was well paid work. In terms of food, we were given 600 grams of bread a day and nothing else. As for wages, the men could earn up to 600 rubles a month, women up to 300.
This situation did not last long: at the end of November the NKVD collected all the people from the kolkhozes and took them to the train station to be sent away. Passenger train cars were provided and we were ordered to get in but the cars were already filled with Jews. The Jews would not let us in, while the Soviets demanded “You sit, sit!” Twenty of us refused to be crammed into the car with the Jews and, after a long disagreement with the transport commandant (some NKVD man), were granted a separate cargo car. By this means we arrived at Andijan, where we were told to transfer to a passenger car. During all this, we were given 900 grams of bread a day which was, notably, issued for free. We waited for further developments, while living in this car, till 4 December.
We were then sent off to the Sredne-chirchik Raion. From the train station, we were taken in horse-drawn carts to the raion town. There, they put us up all over the place, wherever they could (for instance, in the canteen), because they needed to quarter around 3,000 Poles. We started falling ill with some unknown diseases and developing fevers but there was no medical care. My wife was one of those who fell ill and we couldn’t do anything about it; we couldn’t get hold of a doctor, even though there was a hospital nearby. Our assigned rations were 400 grams of bread.
We sat there a for day, which turned into two and then three. They did not give us bread or provide medical care and the number of sick people was rising. Eventually, on the fourth day, we were assigned to Kuybysheva, Kumsk [?] kolkhoz in a village council seven kilometers from Tashkent. It was an Uzbek kolkhoz and they didn’t want us there, but we had a referral from the NKVD so they had to take us in. We were temporarily quartered in the kolkhoz canteen and we still couldn’t get medical care for my sick wife. As we sat there, the head of the kolkhoz said: “The Raion sent you, so the Raion ought to give you food and board.” We went to the head of the village council and he did make some arrangements, such that we got a permanent place to sleep and some food to eat.
After moving into our assigned quarters, we went looking for work so we could buy bread. We had little luck – they said: “You need to work for 15 days and then you’ll get flour. We don’t have bread.” I also found out where I could meet a doctor and pestered him every day to come and see my wife. This eventually worked quite well: I started on 8 December and on 20 December he came and immediately diagnosed my wife with typhoid fever. I was given a hospital referral and on the very next day I was lent a horse-drawn cart by the kolkhoz, in which I drove my wife down to the town tram stop. We got in the tram, then off at the stop where we were supposed to make a transfer, and got stuck there. I called an ambulance but after two hours of further waiting I just went and hired an Uzbek donkey driver for 10 rubles to travel the remaining 200 meters. The doctor on duty, a very polite woman, immediately took my wife in and provided excellent care, though she was visibly displeased that my wife had been sick at home for so long. My wife stayed in the hospital till 20 January.
My brother fell ill on 6 January, along with some people from the other families. The whole problem repeated itself, but this time it took me until 19 January to get a hospital referral. I took them to hospital on 21 January. On the night of 20/21 January, my father died – I buried him at the Uzbek cemetery on 22 January. Then, on 23 January, I brought my wife back from the hospital and following this, on 28 January, my brother died there. He survived typhoid fever but succumbed to double pneumonia, which had been missed due to bad medical care – I was told this by a professor after I arranged for an autopsy to be performed. I took the body from the hospital and buried it next to my father; they both lie in foreign soil. Among the people we lived with, there were two other deaths: Jan Godzis and another man, whose name I do not know.
My brother Jan (born in 1910) got lost somewhere on the convoy in Tashkent. I attempted to find him via the NKVD and sent letters to that effect but to no avail. I only know that he arrived in Tashkent and left for Samarkand – I was told this by some Poles who saw him on the way.
As for me, I received a summons to appear before the raion army draft board. I initially thought that they’d want to draft me into the Soviet army, but it turned out that the draft was for the Polish one. We all received such summons on 9 February, showed up as per procedure, were led off to a train and sent to the board operating in Tashkent. However, the train did not bring us to the city – it stopped 3 kilometers away and we walked the rest of the way. When we arrived, we couldn’t even find out what was where in the city because it was midnight. We returned home and went back to the city the next day. We went to the draft board office and met the board, which had two sections: the medical and the political. There was a Polish doctor, then a captain and a major in the political section, and four NKVD men who screened out Jews, Ukrainians, Belarusians and such. The draft board gave us a referral to the city of Kermine and we were supposed to also get 7 rubles per person as a food allowance but we did not get that money – we were told they’d send it later and, since the train for Kermine was scheduled to depart very soon, we just left for our destination. We subsequently arrived at the Polish Army assembly point in Kermine and were drafted into the army.
I apologize for the defects in my writing – whatever Polish language skills I had I then lost while in Russia. I also only graduated the first three grades of primary school and am self- taught beyond that. I gave the dates I was certain of and did not add any. Some things I’ve forgotten and I’ll occasionally remember bits of them but not the whole thing; it’s impossible to recall everything in detail.