Kazimierz Belda

(This is) an extract from my father-in-law, Kazimierz Bełda's account of deportation. He was deported from Wołyn but tells in this account of how half of his train was joined to half of a train coming from the Grodno region. My mother-in-law, Wanda Laskowska was on the Grodno part of the train. They both ended up in Nikulinskaya Baza:

"It was already dusk by the time we reached the station (Kornaczówka) where we discovered hundreds of people wrapped in blankets clustering round a bit of a fire which had been lit by the escorting soldiers. Late into that night a very long train was loaded with its human cargo. Each wagon was fitted with wooden bunk beds, a cast iron stove and an opening in the floor with its accompanying freezing ventilation. The wagons were locked and able to be opened only from the outside by the guards. We spent the first three days on the station. During that time we fed ourselves with what we’d brought with us and shared it with those who had nothing.

When eventually the train did move there was much speculation as to where our journey would take us. Once we’d crossed the border they all came to the conclusion that this was ‘the Eastern Express’, and this belief of the overwhelming majority proved to be correct.

This long train, bearing hundreds of families from the territory, slowly chugged east to ‘the Paradise of the Leaders of Socialism’. After a few days the train headed north, then still later moved east once more. In a while we stopped on some station or other alongside another stationary train. Then came a change; half of our train was coupled up to the other train and half of its wagons to ours. Later we found out that the people who had joined us were from the district of Grodno and, like us were being deported from their osada (settlement).

From the moment we were on Soviet soil we were fed at government expense. Once daily the train stopped at a station, wagons were opened, and two people from each wagon went for warm soup and boiling water. We travelled north as far as Kazan and from there east through the Urals, where alongside the track stood great quantities of military and agricultural equipment covered with snow and without any sort of protection. We reached Sverdlovsk in Perm Province and the town of Berezniki where our rail journey ended. After two days travelling by sledge, we stopped in the forest base of Nikulinskaya. Here we were to be housed – this was our place of life and work.

After the authorities had mixed together the folk from Volhynia and Grodno, we were allocated wooden barracks where each family had one bed space and a stove for cooking. These huts had been built by Ukrainians before 1928. The living space we received for our eight-person family was very skimped but luxurious when compared with that in the goods train.

Following two days’ rest all the able-bodied, both men and women were assembled, divided into work brigades, and under the supervision of the local foreman of ten people, began very arduous, strenuous toil for the like of which no-one was prepared. The norms set for us were impossible to meet. Wages were insufficient to buy our due portions of food so the work was unproductive since it was done on empty stomachs.

As youths, my school friend and I were required to help a forest technician mark trees to be felled. Later we acted as helpers to a tractor driver collecting logs to be floated downstream. My last months there I spent as one of my father’s brigades felling trees.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union the authorities issued orders for a working day of twelve hours with just one day’s rest every ten days. Towards the end of 1941 came the news of the amnesty. Officially we were declared to be free and could volunteer to join the Polish army being formed in the south of the country. Immediately almost all (except the elderly) volunteered because this entitled them to free travel – the family members had to wait behind ostensibly because there was insufficient transport. "