Gunner Witold Girdziusz, born on 15 August 1920 in Mieszańce, Mielegiany Commune, Święciany District, Wilno Voivodeship.
After the Soviets had given Wilno to the Lithuanians, the Święciany district became part of Soviet territory. On 23 May 1940 I intended to cross the Soviet-Lithuanian border. At the border I was wounded in my leg and arrested.
For the first three days I was kept in a guardhouse in Święciany, where I was interrogated by the border guards the whole time. Then I was transferred to the prison in Stara Wilejka.
The prison looked terrible. Its windows were covered with boards. The cells, which in Polish times could accommodate one person each, now held 16–18 people.
There was no bathing for two months. Food: tea in the morning, soup for dinner, tea for supper. We received 600 grams of bread. Interrogations took place mostly at night. I was interrogated six times. The interrogations lasted around four hours. I had to stand at attention the whole time. When I was so exhausted that my head tilted forward, an NKVD officer approached me and hit me under the chin with his gun. When they told me to sign a report following the interrogation, I asked them to read it out to me. They replied, “I don’t read reports to every scoundrel.” I did not sign it. Then two other officers came in and started forcing me to sign the report. I do not remember what they did to force me. I woke up in the prison hospital. My face was all right, but my ribcage and sides were covered in bruises.
On 25 October they read out the sentence: three years of hard labor, and they took me to the north. The whole transport consisted of two thousand Poles. On the way, we received the same amount of bread, plus some salty fish that made us thirsty, but we were given no water. There were 46 people in each 18-ton railcar.
On 2 November I arrived in Kotlas, Arkhangelsk Oblast. The number of prisoners was about five thousand. The majority of them were Poles. They wore light clothes and had no coats. The temperature fell to 25–40 degrees below zero. The hospitals were overcrowded. The barracks were set on piles and were covered with boards. There was no stove inside. From 9 to 13 people died each day. After two months I managed to establish contact with the home country, which was very difficult.
My family sent me four food packages, but two of them were lost on the way. I benefited only from one of them because as soon as I got the other, it was stolen by five zhuliks [petty thieves] who only did things like that. There were gangs who waited at the barrack door at night for well-dressed Poles to go outside, and then they removed their clothes, shoes, or sometimes they even murdered them. The authorities knew about everything.
Later on, on 2 April 1941, I was transferred to camp no. 17, Aykino. My job there consisted in unloading iron and grains from ships. The quota was 9 tons per person. If I met the quota, I received 15–20 rubles. I could not buy anything at the store. A portion of bread in the barracks cost 6–7 rubles.
After the Polish-Soviet agreement had been signed, I was transferred to camp no. 22 in Chibyu. On 3 September, I received an udostoverenie [certificate of release] and I was referred to the Polish Army in Buzuluk. On 23 September, I arrived in Totskoye and joined the 21st Infantry Regiment.
Place of stay, 25 February 1943