IRENA CZEKAŁOWSKA

Volunteer Irena Czekałowska, student, unmarried.

On 18 February 1940, I was arrested and transported with my mother to the USSR, to the posyolek [settlement] of Poludnievitsa. We arrived cold and hungry to the city of Gorki, from where kolkhozniks took us to the posyolek by sledge. There we found two large barracks where they unloaded us. Our first transport comprised 570 people, so there were 285 people for every barrack. Lying down was out of the question, everyone stood or sat down and dozed off, exhausted with hunger and cold. Hunger, cold, and the cries of small children made for a terrible scene.

On the next day, we went to work in the forest that surrounded us on all sides. They divided us into groups; some people felled trees, others cut off their branches, others transported them, and others hewed them and built new barracks. The pay was very low, in addition to this we got 300 grams of bread and tea, while soup could be bought at the canteen, although it was often necessary to stand in the freezing weather for the entire day to get that spoonful of warm food.

There were various classes of people deported to our posyolek, but they were mostly military settlers and foresters. As for our coexistence, it left much to be desired, there were three people among us who passed themselves off as Ukrainians and they reported every trifle to the NKVD if someone mentioned Poland and its resurgence, even jokingly or casually, or even if he prayed, “they” (the NKVD) knew about it immediately and called him in – then they beat him, or even arrested him. We were surrounded entirely by communists who said nothing but vile obscenities and didn’t want to hear any mention of Poland. There were even cases where they violently assaulted young Polish girls. They organized a school with six grades and a kindergarten, and there they tried to instill the communist venom in children, they didn’t allow them to speak Polish, and if they noticed a cross, the poor kid suffered a lot. Due to the hunger, misery, and cold (since nothing could be brought from home except for 10 kilograms of food), horrible epidemics of typhoid and dysentery broke out. Dozens of people died every day. I can’t remember all the names because I worked at the hospital and hundreds died in my presence. At that time, the doctor, if you can call him that, went on vacation and closed the hospital. The posyolek turned into a valley of death, it was impossible bury the dead regularly, and it was mostly the young people who died. I was ill, too, but luckily I survived. A third of us left that place, and the rest succumbed to the terrible epidemics.

Near the end of our wanderings we could contact family left in Poland, but letters and parcels were strictly censored and many were lost.

After the amnesty and long arguments about reprimands, I came to Guzar on 10 December, and there I worked at the post at first, and then I joined the Women’s Auxiliary Military Service.