WIKTOR BUJKO

Wiktor Bujko, corporal, civilian profession—farmer, married.

At the time of the Soviet army’s incursion on 17 September 1939, I was living in the village of Kozłowszczyzna, Holszańska county, Oszmański district, Vilnius Voivodeship. After the Soviet troops’ incursion, a general disenchantment was noticeable among the local population, since no one expected anything good from the Soviet authorities.

In anticipation of the ordinances of the newly arrived authorities, we decided to hold frequent neighborly meetings, during which we discussed together how we should address these ordinances. So when the voting was announced and we were all forewarned that if we did not participate there would be criminal repercussions, we decided—for fear of reprisals—to vote, but cast votes that were not valid. We have made every effort to ensure that the polling station was set out in such a way that every voter could secretly cross out his or her vote and that no one would know who cast a valid or invalid vote. This proved to be entirely possible.

Being curious about the result of the vote, I went to the polling station late in the evening to vote and wait for the result. After the voting had finished, the electoral commission together with the young lady from the Soviet Communist Youth Party, who had been assigned as a canvasser and shaker-upper, made her way to the private abode of the chairman of the electoral commission—Skurnowicz, a blacksmith in the village of Dorgiszka—where they were supposed to count the votes and arrange the formalities. Because this blacksmith was my good friend, I went to his home.

The commission was in the second room, and I stayed in the kitchen [and], talking to the lady of the house, and listened in on the committee’s discussions.

After counting the votes, it turned out that 92 percent of the inhabitants of this particular catchment area had voted. Then they started checking the validity of the votes, which was the most interesting for me. Suddenly, I hear: ‘A fig, a fig.’, ‘Crossed out.’ Again, a drawing— the Communist Youth lady thought it looked like a spider. After checking 25 votes, it turned out that only two [were] valid. Suddenly, the Communist Youth lady erupted in wild fury, cast all the votes into the stove and burned them, and counted out the right number of clean votes [and threw them] into the urn. She ordered the election commission to sign the blank minutes of the electoral commission and left. The voting involved the commission handing the voter a ballot paper with the name of one candidate appointed in advance (by whom nobody knew) printed on it—and whoever wanted to vote for him would cast a clean sheet, and whoever wanted to cast an invalid vote had to cross out the candidate’s name. Meanwhile, the majority of voters took cards with them on their way to vote, containing various cynical drawings, and put them into the envelopes for the ballot box instead of the ballot papers they had received, which is what ended up causing the Communist Youth lady’s rage. How the voting proceeded in other catchment areas, I personally could not say, but I heard from friends that it was similar everywhere. It was possible to conclude that after the voting they began a purge across the whole county: people were rounded up, arrested and deported.

On the night from 9–10 February 1940 at 2.00 a.m. a few carts arrived in my backyard with the president of the local committee at the head, and when I opened the door, 14 people entered my home. They arrested me and put a guard there with a bayonet, and gave my wife half an hour to dress the children. They carted them all away to Bohdanów train station, [then] they locked us up in specially prepared wagons, packed full of people who had been rounded up. They transported us in closed wagons from 10 February until 4 March 1940. For the first four days they gave us nothing to eat, and then gave food once a day.

After unloading [us] on 4 March 1940 at the [illegible] railway station, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Udinski region, they took 12 [illegible] to the forest and placed us in two general barracks. There were 52 families—about 300 people. They appointed [us] an NKVD commander, who became our master of life or death. Moving farther than half a kilometer from the barracks was seen as an attempt to escape and was punishable. Every adult—both men and women—had to go and do forestry work every day, eight hours a day, and was forced to make set quotas. A man’s average earnings amounted to 70–100 rubles a month, while a women made 30–40 rubles. The prices were as follows: one egg—three rubles, one liter of milk—three rubles, one kilogram of meat—30 rubles, lard—70 rubles. And there was nowhere to buy anything, because there were no settlements nearby. Contact with the local people was strictly forbidden. 400 g of bread daily would be sold to a working person while a non-working person could buy 200 g daily. In addition, [illegible] almost nothing could be bought. The government price for bread was one ruble ten kopecks per kilogram.

The commander and NKVD man each time reminded us to forget about Poland, because we would end up living and working to death in the Siberian taiga. At the same time, they added that nothing would happen to the adults, they only wanted them for physical labor, while the small children would become Soviet citizens, but after starting up a school. The teaching program began by telling the children that there is no God, but the children did not want to hear about it, so [the Bolsheviks] realized that the children could not be brought up as Soviet citizens and they stopped talking about atheism at school.

They forced everyone to buy cows and dwellings built by our carpenters in the forest. They gave a loan of 3,000 rubles to buy cows with a repayment period of three years and 5,000 rubles to buy a house to be repaid within ten years. The people, considering that their earnings were not enough to buy bread, to feed their family, and that there was no way to pay they could possibly pay off the debt, not wanting to tie themselves down with any obligations, did not agree to the above offer, explaining that we had houses and cows in Poland and that we had been compensated for everything, and we did not intend to acquire any more property.

As for keeping clean, we went to the bathhouse every week, but in the summer we were awfully irritated by poisonous black-fly, while at night we were attacked by a teeming amount of bedbugs. It was impossible to fight them off.

There were no infectious diseases, but during our stay in the taiga from 4 February 1940 until 6 September 1941, 25% of the people died from hunger and exhaustion—mostly the elderly and young children.

We corresponded with those left behind in the homeland and received money and food parcels, which was the only thing that saved us from starving to death. However, many [parcels] were lost at the post office.

After the amnesty was announced on 6 September 1941, we went away to work at the pig-farm near Uka [?] railway station. In this region, work was somewhat more bearable, but we were not paid any wages and we had no money to buy bread. On top of this, the housing conditions were simply unbearable. At that time, we received a telegram from a Polish representative, saying that anyone who did not have bearable conditions should go south—then everyone started to sell whatever they had left to sell and leave for Novosibirsk group by group, because the railway could not take everyone at once. We were directed to Uzbekistan from Novosibirsk, and whoever managed to catch some transport got a free ride, while others went at their own expense.

The transport on which I was traveling was directed to Karsha station, from where they assigned us to collective farms on 13 December 1941. At the collective farms we worked for 500 grams of wheat or barley per day [per working person], while a non-working person got 400 g.

At the beginning of February 1942, a Soviet-Polish military commission began operating, which, after an examination to check our fitness for military service, sent us to Kermine station, where we were conscripted to the Polish Army.

12 February 1943.