STEFAN GŁOWACKI

1. Personal data:

Platoon Sergeant Stefan Głowacki, 42 years old, married.

2. Date and circumstances of arrest:

I was arrested on 6 May 1941 in Delejów, district of Stanisławów, as suspected of belonging to a clandestine military organization.

3. Name of the camp:

The prison for politically suspect persons in Zlatoust in the Ural Mountains.

4. Description of the camp, prison:

Four-story brick buildings surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Living conditions were terrible – cells intended for five people would house 36 – 40, but the hygienic conditions were passable. The area was hilly, and the climate very cold.

5. Social composition of POWs, prisoners, deportees:

20 percent – Poles from all walks of life;

70 percent – Ukrainians, nationalist peasants;

10 percent – politically suspect Bolsheviks.

The Ukrainians and Bolsheviks stuck together, and were hostile towards us Poles.

6. Life in the camp, prison:

We would be woken up at 4.00 a.m., and numbered off at 6.00 a.m. (and later also at 4.00 p.m.). The food was very bad. We wore our own clothes and slept on the concrete floor; as a result, we were all swollen up. We were not allowed to smoke, while due to differences in religions and political leanings there was no friendship between prisoners. There was no cultural life.

7. Attitude of the authorities, NKVD towards Poles:

The NKVD behaved brutally towards us Poles. During interrogations they would beat you with leather whips and chairs, hit you on the head or the legs with a ruler for 30 minutes or so, or until you lost consciousness, force you to sit for up to 72 hours on the edge of a chair with your arms and legs straightened out, lock you up in the dark cell and threaten you with being shot, encourage you to declare that you were of a different nationality, and keep on repeating that Poland would not be reborn.

8. Medical care, hospitals, mortality rate:

We were visited by a doctor every three days, but they started admitting us to hospital only after we organized a hunger strike. The mortality rate in the region was of 50 percent; one Grabowski (I don’t remember his name), some 65 years of age, from Worochła, district of Nadwórna, who was in one cell with me, died. The corpses would be laid down in the snow and ferried off somewhere in the night.

9. Was it at all possible to keep in touch with the home country and your family? If yes, then what contacts were permitted?

No.

10. When were you released and how did you get through to the Polish Army?

I was released from prison on 13 February 1942 and joined a transport headed for Lugovoy near Taraz, where the 10th Infantry Division was being formed.