Piotr Andronowski, aged 22, unmarried.
I was taken away from Kobryń (Polesie) with my mother and three brothers. My father (Maksymilian Andronowski) had been arrested earlier and sent to Russia, I don’t know where exactly to this day.
Circumstances of deportation: on 13 April 1940 at 2.00 a.m., the house we lived in was surrounded by Soviet soldiers. We learned that we would be taken away and were given three hours to pack, with 50 kilograms of luggage allowed per person.
We were loaded into freight cars. There was a terrible lack of room: men, women and children, the elderly – everyone was transported together. On the way, we were fed relatively well, i.e. we received bread in abundance and a warm dish once a day. That’s how we reached northern Kazakhstan, the Akmolinsk region and oblast (voivodeship), the village of Peredovaya – a kolkhoz. The village was built entirely of clay, including the roofs. It was located on a gray plain burnt by the sun, as was the whole of Kazakhstan. People were dressed in clean but very poor clothes. It was a village for deportees, Russians from various places in Russia who had owned some land property and had been of some importance prior to the revolution. In terms of administration, the village was under the rule of the so- called predsedatel (administrator). In terms of “political views,” however, it was ruled by the commandant, an NKVD member.
Having arrived, we were immediately told to adapt our flats, which were half ruined, with holes in the roof and walls with no windows. We were already sent to work after just three days, and barely managed to persuade the authorities to exempt a 45-year-old mother from going to work. The work lasted from sunrise to sunset, with an hour-long lunch break.
I immediately noticed the villagers’ attitude to bread, which I initially couldn’t understand. They found it hard to comprehend that one could need anything more to eat besides bread. Only later did I understand. After a year of crop failure, cereal prices increased beyond measure, while the remuneration for an entire year of work was in deficit. In a kolkhoz, a certain part of the crops is given to the state, while the rest is distributed between the kolkhozniks. So, when the kolkhoz had given the owed amount of crops to the state after the year of crop failure, there was nothing left for the kolkhozniks. And since they had been eating on credit for an entire year while working, it was counted out of their salary.
That way, after a year of work, we had a debt of about a thousand rubles. Ultimately, there was no food in the kolkhoz and people had to provide for themselves at their own expense. Starvation set in. We had to measure daily portions of flour with spoons. There was nothing else to eat apart from that. We had no bread throughout the entire winter. Other inhabitants of the kolkhoz, though not everyone, were not much better off than us. Despite strict prohibition against leaving the hamlet, risking arrest, we ended up moving to the village of Siemianówka, the zagotskot base, Akmolinsk region and oblast. The conditions were better over there for a while. That’s where my family remained (my mother, Michalina, and two brothers, Hipolit and Narcyz) and probably remain to this day.
I tried to join the Polish Army in the fall of 1941, which I didn’t manage to do due to a lack of places. It was not until 6 February 1942 that I was drafted.
1 March 194[3].