Private Filip Pawlukowicz, born in 1893, farmer; 104th transport unit.
Arrested on 30 June 1940, accused of having fought against the Soviets as a commune alderman in 1939.
Imprisoned in Drohiczyn Poleski and in labor camps in Vorkuta, forced labor.
The living conditions in prison were bad, we got 600g of bread a day, a bowl of light soup, and boiling water [kipyatok] for supper. We slept on bare asphalt or, alternatively, on the floor. We couldn’t change our underwear and could only wash clothes in a mug of water that they gave us for supper.
We bathed once in a month in a liter of cold water. The cells were overcrowded, dirty (millions of bedbugs) and lousy. We didn’t cut our hair or shave.
In the labor camps: we were ragged, barefoot, got 300 grams of bread, an oat soup for dinner and tea for supper. The work quota was impossible to fill.
Prisoners were Polish Catholics [and] Jews, and Orthodox Ukrainians. There were more than 460 prisoners in the prison, and in the labor camp there were more than 3,000 Polish people.
People had been arrested because they were colonists, military settlers, state officials, court officers, policemen, engineers, merchants (seen as speculating capitalists), farmers (seen as kulaks), wealthy and well educated. They were considered by Soviets as nenadezhnyi people (dangerous people).
The Soviet NKVD authorities’ attitude was ruthless. Interrogation methods: beating, kicking, tossing into an underground water dungeon, sticking needles under the nails, pinching fingers in the door, putting in punishment cells for up to six days with nothing but water.
Soviet communism was promoted by saying that we wouldn’t see Poland anymore, that God doesn’t exist and that Soviet communism will overwhelm the whole world.
Medical assistance was bad. They distributed the same pills for all types of illnesses. Cyprian Kamiński from Huta village, Osowiec, Drohiczyn Poleski district, was murdered in front of me during his investigation by the NKVD. More than a hundred Poles died in the labor camps.
I had no contact with the country or with my family.
I was released from the camps on 10 September 1941. Having presented myself before the military commission in Guzar, I joined the Polish army. I personally confirm the above- mentioned facts.