Stanisław Bielawski of the Engineers, 36 years old, a farmer by occupation, married.
I was arrested on 1 April 1940 for being a village leader and a cooperator of the police.
I was incarcerated in Grodno, from where on 29 June 1940 they transferred me to the prison in Vitebsk, where I spent three months. Next, they sent me to a forced labor camp near Kuybyshev, Vesnyanka, where I worked as a carpenter.
Although the work was forced, there were no quotas; but we received no wages, only food – very meager.
They did not interrogate us, and neither did they use torture.
Living conditions: tents, very poor medical care, old and mean clothes. There was no communist agitation, but they did tell us to forget about Poland. The attitude of the authorities and the NKVD towards us was reserved.
On 5 September 1941 I was released and allowed to seek work as a free man. I worked in Chelyabinsk, and thereafter in a few other towns. I had been sentenced to eight years of hard labor. I enlisted in the Polish Army on 1 March 1942 in Chokpak.