HELENA ŚLUŻYŃSKA

1. [Personal data]:

Senior Volunteer Helena Ślużyńska, 41, teacher, married.

2. [Date and circumstances of the arrest]:

I was arrested on 14 June 1941 in Wilno, in my apartment.

3. [The name of the camp, prison, or place of forced labor]:

Altai Krai, Siberia, city of Rubcowsk, to the gypsum factory; then I was deported to Kazakhstan for a kolkhoz.

4. [Description of the camp, prison]:

Forest area, lived in a chalet; conditions and hygiene were mediocre.

5. [The composition of prisoners, captives, displacees]:

About 500 people, Polish nationality. The intellectual and moral level was average, relations: good.

6. [Life in the camp, prison]:

Working day – from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM in the forest, with bad conditions. I did not complete any quotas, I did not receive any pay for work; food was poor, I only had my own clothes. Social and cultural life was possible.

7. [The NKVD authorities’ attitude towards the Poles]:

The Soviet’s attitude towards the Poles was arrogant.

8. [Medical care, hospitals, mortality]:

Medical care was possible, but there were no hospitals. Mortality in the camp was high because of typhus. I do not remember the names of the dead.

9. [What kind of contact, if any, was there with your family and country?]:

I did not have any contact with my country or my family.

10. [When were you released and how did you get to the army?]:

I was released after the Polish-Soviet agreement as a result of the amnesty. After arriving to a Polish outpost in the region of [illegible], Jambulan Oblast, from where I received a directing to Jalalabad [a city in eastern Afghanistan], where the Polish Army was formed and from where I left to Persia (Pahlevi).