MIECZYSŁAW SIEKIERKOWSKI

Biography between the arrest and the release:

1. Arrested in 1939. I was detained in prison in Krzemieniec [Kremenets] on 24 March 1940. In August 1940, I was sent to a prison in the Soviet Union.

2. [Personal data:]

Master Corporal Mieczysław Siekierkowski, age 44, senior police constable of the State Police, married.

3. [Date and circumstances of arrest:]

Arrested on 17 September 1939, as a threat [against] the Soviet Union – [as someone who] fought against communism as a police officer.

4. [Name of the camp, prison, place of forced labor:]

Detained in Krzemieniec prison, in 1940, [I was] sent to prison in Kirovgrad in the Soviet Union, and subsequently to Dnipropetrovsk. After being sentenced to eight years of forced physical labor, I was sent to the labor camp in Talitsa, Ivdel region (Ural Mountains).

5. [Description of the camp, prison:]

The conditions were horrible: wooden barracks set up in wetlands. The toilet could be reached from the first or the second barrack through tunnels in the snow or, during the summer, through swamps and water. During winter, the barracks were not heated; we weren’t given any firewood even though we lived in a 100-square-kilometer forest. The floors and walls in the barracks were filled with holes; the wind would blow the snow in on one side of the room, while water was freezing in a bucket on the other side. We had no bedding, not even straw [to make a mattress].

There were around 30 prisoners in a room, sometimes up to even 70. [We slept] one next to another, sleeping on dirty beds or sometimes on the floor due to the lack of space; or [we slept] next to the stove, given that there was some firewood available from the cooks (in exchange for something else) and fire could be started in the stove, so you could dry wet clothes after work and rest in its heat. During such a rest, you had to take a few moments to rub your skin to get the lice off, and then to catch bugs and cockroaches, as prisoners were prey to them. If you could rest for even two or three hours, the NKVD would come to do prisoner inspections and searches; thus, some nights of rest were gone.

We woke up at 4:00 AM, I ate a quarter liter of thin soup, and went to roll call at 6:15 AM. At 7:00 AM, we marched to work, hungry, five to eight kilometers on foot to the forest. On the way back, at 7:00 PM, whoever tried to take a rest was hit with a gunstock, or even struck with a bayonet. That’s how the soldiers guarding the prisoners helped. Around 15 Poles died on the way back from work during the first days of March 1940. It was only after an appeal made by the Polish about such bad treatment that we succeeded in their attitude changing. Prisoners were not sent to work if it was colder than minus 35 degrees [Celsius] and making us walk great distances to work was no longer practiced. The temperatures dropped as low as minus 65 degrees at the time.

6. [The composition of prisoners of war, inmates, exiles:]

In the prison there were: Zanfal (age 45), the starosta [head of district] of Krzemieniec district; Beaupré (age 52), mayor of Kamieniec [Kamyenyets]; Szwacz (age 60), accountant of a senior high school in Krzemieniec; Sułkowski, a clerk at a health insurance fund in Krzemieniec; Lieutenant Tarkowski, head of the Riflemen’s Association in Krzemieniec; apart from those were police officers: Sergeant Adam Adamczyk, Senior Constable Aleksander Saron, Łukasz Łukowski; Hornostaj; Górny; Piasecki; Constable Libera; Mazurek; and electrical technician Skalski, from Krzemieniec. The relations were good between us, the spirit of patriotism never faded. Everyone listed above, as well as me, were locked up and taken away as individuals suspicious to the occupant and [suspected of] fighting communism in Poland before the war.

7. [Life in the camp, prison:]

Around 800 prisoners, having walked 65 kilometers on foot from the train station to the concentration camp Talitsa, Ivdel region (Ural Mountains) – in minus 60 degrees Celsius and 0.5 meters of snowfall, rushed through forests, repeatedly struck with gunstocks and bayonets – finally reached the camp. The barracks were cold, there wasn’t any firewood given to fuel the stoves – we only traded for some with the cooks and then we were able to partially heat up the barracks. It was on 17 February 1941. On the next day, true torment began. After such a long journey, we had to get up at 5:00 AM, we were interrogated at 6:00 AM, and after assigning everyone and separating political prisoners from criminal prisoners, they started checking our attitude towards Soviet authorities, and if any prisoner stated that the Soviet government had no right to punish us, he was sent to a punishment cell. Everyone prepared for work. In the afternoon, we brought freshly cut forest wood on our shoulders and we used it to fuel the stoves, but the cold was so great that there was no way of heating up the room sufficiently.

On the second day, the forest work began. We were rushed out to work at 7:00 AM, in minus 55 degrees Celsius, sometimes even minus 60 degrees. Wood cutting started in the forest, with 200% of the daily quota expected from us. For achieving this amount, you could receive 750 grams of bread, some thick soup in the morning, some soup for dinner, a piece of fish or tiny fish up to 20 grams in the afternoon, and a 15-gram whole meal bread roll every other day – they called this the first pot. Whoever achieved 150% of the daily standard (the second pot): 500 grams of bread, thinner soup, and 10 grams of fish and thin soup for supper. Whoever was too weak to achieve even 100% of the daily standard, received: 200 grams of bread, thin soup for dinner, and supper and was considered the greatest enemy. Somebody like that was treated badly, because even for failure to achieve the obligatory standard, the chief officer of the camp would inflict extra punishment, as it was called, a punishment cell. The punishment was: only 100 grams of bread a day, water in the morning and afternoon, soup for dinner, sleeping without clothes on the floor or bare soil, wet, without beddings.

Work had to be done from 7:00 AM until 7:00 PM, and there was a guard for every five prisoners. One prisoner couldn’t talk to another. Constant colds, frostbitten legs and ears were commonplace. Every second or third day, we brought a frozen or dead Pole back from work (I can’t remember their names, but they were aged between 25 and 30).

8. [The NKVD’s attitude towards the Polish people:]

NKVD party members, as well as Soviet soldiers, did not treat prisoners in a humane way, but rather they could be compared to frenzied cattle. Pushing with gunstocks, kicking, beating, and cursing without end. Any statements that prisoners were treated inhumanely were punished by additional three to seven days of the punishment cell. Blasphemy, especially by commanding officers or overseers, had no boundaries. You wouldn’t believe your ears that a man, a living, breathing being could utter such words that: Christ was a thief, the Blessed Virgin Mary was a woman of easy virtue, and that there was no God at all. Regarding propaganda, they tried to convince us that we would never see Poland again and that we have no right to restore Poland. But even so, they failed to break the patriotic spirit among the Polish, even though they promised that should one accept Soviet citizenship, he would do very well in terms of food, work, and general existence in that “paradise” of theirs.

Concerning interrogations before the sentence: I was interrogated five times about political matters, namely the Polish government, and confidential matters. The third and the fifth [interrogations] were the hardest for me. I lost consciousness due to the beatings and kickings [I received]. When I regained consciousness, I realized I was woken up with water as I was soaking wet and my nose was bleeding. They told me clearly that I tried going to sleep and I hit myself on the nose. Then one of the lieutenants (the judge) stood me up against the wall, pointing his gun at me, and said he was going to shoot me unless I confessed and gave him clear answers to his questions. When those tortures brought no results, the soldiers took me to a special hall where they left me locked in a wardrobe for three hours, after which they brought me back to the judge. The judge who had interrogated me earlier gave me a piece of paper to sign – on it was a few words in Russian – and when I refused to sign it, they forced me to go to their car, threatening me with a rifle, and transported [me] to prison (having called me a Polish pig just before they did that). [My] sentence: three years of hard labor. Other Polish prisoners were treated the same way by the lieutenants of the judges, or interrogators.

9. [Medical assistance, hospitals, mortality rate:]

Because of the cold, I caught pneumonia. In the hospital in Talitsa, in the Ural Mountains, medical care was mediocre and particular care was given to Poles by an old lady doctor, from a rich family from Moscow, from before 1920, who was assigned to that prison. Six Poles died in the hospitals during that time, including Captain Markut of the 7th Car Battalion from Warsaw. I don’t remember the names of the others (ages 20 to 30, two from Lesser Poland [Kraków Voivodeship], three from Lublin Voivodeship). Two died in the camp from exhaustion: Senior Constable Jan Soran of the State Police station in Krzemieniec, and Constable Zdoliński of the 1st State Police station in Równe.

10. [Was there any possibility to get in contact with one’s country and family?]

In the camp I received one letter from Poland, from a friend who informed me about my family, but I couldn’t get in contact with them directly, as they were arrested and taken away to North Kazakhstan.

11. [When were you released and how did you manage to join the army?]

I was released from the labor camp in September 1941. In February 1942, I received news about a Polish army being formed within the Soviet Union, and after applying to a representative of the organization in Jalalabad, I was accepted and I entered the ranks of the Polish army (9th Division).