Janina Sulkowska-Gladun

Janina SULKOWSKA-GLADUN

Excerpt from her memoir

Janina was a university student when Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland in 1939. Her hometown suffered German bombings and occupation by the USSR, even as she and her family aided refugees. “Janka” joined the underground with friends, but in 1940 she was arrested by the NKVD, tortured and shipped to the Gulag. Her entire family would be deported to Siberia, and many relatives and friends suffered and died at the hands of the Soviets and Nazis. Janina’s award-winning memoir chronicles her amazing odyssey, starting with the invasion of Poland, as a prisoner in the outposts of the Gulag, her survival in the USSR and escape, and finally exile in India and England. Through all her trials, Janka was determined to find her scattered family and friends, and to tell the story of those whose voices had been silenced. Janina died in 1997.

The following is an excerpt from Janina Sulkowska’s book Wartime Memoirs, 1939-1949, published in Warsaw in 1998, and translated by her son Chris Gladun.

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They unloaded us some distance beyond the station–a usual procedure. After undergoing repeated head counts, guards with dogs and bayonets hurried us up into columns. Just then an elderly woman collapsed on the rail tracks. A locomotive was backing up and several of us jumped to her aid. But a guard let loose several dogs which began tearing at the woman too weak to move–and then he thrust viciously at her with his bayonet. The women let out a horrid scream, but it was her pack that was impaled. The guard flung it at us as we rolled the poor woman away.

We spent the first night in the corridor of Kharkov Prison which we were warned was harsh. We peeked inside one of the cells, and beheld a Dantesque scene: a thigh here, a buttock there–naked bodies shimmering with black grease! This was the cell for women suffering from scabies, and the grease was a balm–but I was sure I was witnessing one of the lower the circles of purgatory.

We were shuffled from cell to cell, each more crowded, even as transport after transport arrived. Most nights the corridors echoed to the coughs and snoring of male prisoners who would then spend days sitting in the courtyard. In this prison I met Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Jews, Rumanians, Estonians, Byelorussians and others. We were mostly political prisoners. Some had already spent time in other prisons and were in transit to a labour camp to serve their sentence; others were awaiting their cases or still undergoing interrogations. There were also common criminals who were suspicious of the political prisoners except for what they could steal. Our huge cell was crammed with several hundred women, and it was usually bedlam; sleeping was done in shifts.

I visited four cells and the infirmary where I met many interesting women. Some of them celebrated my second name day in prison. Each woman contributed a thread from her clothing to my present, a tie embroidered with “May 16 , 1941, Kharkov.” I still have that tie. Just at the high point of singing and celebrating, an NKVD officer rushed in with his guards. “Off to the isolator! “he screamed and grabbed an elderly Polish embassy worker jailed for being posted to Berlin. For her this was a death sentence.

But an actress from Lwow jumped up and delivered a stirring confession that she was responsible for this “cabaret.” I also insisted it was my fault as it was my name day—and quickly others joined in, all demanding to be sent to the isolator. The officer stared incredulously at this mob of martyrs. “The devil take you all!” he snorted and slammed the door.

Luckily through Dzunia’s parents I managed to get my mother’s address in Siberian exile, and I wrote a tearful postcard in Russian (with the help of Marzenka), hoping it would reach my mother, sister and brother. And it did. Just days after writing it, we were on the move once more.

In a June heat wave, a trainload of prisoners set off for Starobielsk some 150 kilometers south of Kharkov. I was frantic that Dzunia was forced to remain behind. Would she catch up to me and Marzenka in the next shipment? The trip had the usual deaths from dehydration and asphyxiation in the cattle cars; bodies were thrown out at stops along the way.

Starobielsk Prison was a converted Russian Orthodox monastery. Some 4,000 Polish Officers had been held here as POWs in 1940–but we did not know that almost all of them had been murdered by the Soviets, as were those in other camps. Among them were the husbands, sons and brothers of the women who now slept in the same bunks and hoped to be reunited with them.

Near the main cupola there was a building which housed Polish girls aged 12 to 16. We were perplexed by the sight of some of them carrying somebody wrapped in a blanket to the bath house. Was one of them a cripple or sick? We learned there were several Orthodox nuns in the same building who refused to participate in the communal baths where nudity prevailed. The prison authorities insisted they must take the baths. It was a dilemma which our Polish girls cleverly solved, and which left the nuns with a clean conscience, and a clean body, and satisfied prison policy. At bath time the girls would “kidnap” a nun and transport her in blanket to the bathhouse where they would disrobe and wash her–with their eyes closed.

Polish boys also were kept in a separate building. They were put to work carrying kettles of boiling soup or “coffee” from the kitchen. I cried every time I saw their determined smiles as they struggled with huge loads teetering on legs malformed by disease and rickets. There were accidents and many boys simply were never seen again. In some cases, they had mothers who kept vigils at a prison window to get a glimpse of a beloved son. At any time they could be shipped out separately by the Soviets.

My father was here at the time I arrived, but shortly he was put on the transports further into the USSR, and we didn’t learn of each other’s presence. Pius Zaleski was also a prisoner here, and he not only met my father, but gave him a pair of his own pants. Pius was suffering from malnutrition, and some Polish doctors tried to take care of him, but his kidneys failed. Before he died he requested that his school in Warsaw be told of his death. Pius’s body was dumped into a mass grave.

At the back of the of the prison yard a ramshackle building housed the terminal cases. Usually men, near death’s-door and often insane. We observed them with a mixture of pity and horror: skeletal figures in rags, shuffling aimlessly, mumbling or erupting in horrid laughter. One figure rocked back and forth whimpering in a monotone, oblivious to the world. He might have been a banker, a scientist, a famous writer–but he was far beyond that now. It seemed to me that the women were much better at survival than men. Somehow, we were able to form a community that in spite of hunger and suffering, was able to give strength to its members. Men tended to collapse into their misery while women sought each other for support.

Inexplicably Starobielsk prison was being evacuated. It was the end of June, and the process took several days. There were rumours that the Soviets were making room for German prisoners though no one thought that the Germans and their Soviet allies were about to fight. Group after group was led to waiting trains. Sitting near the church being endlessly counted, we could follow the progress of the guards searching for prisoners by their banging on the walls of the huge cupola. A horrid beating awaited anyone who hid in the rafters or belfry.

Our trip lasted several days and nights. We passed Moscow one night and kept heading in a north-easterly direction; nobody had the faintest idea where we were bound. Early one morning, 120 milometers north of Gorky, the train simply stopped in the middle of a field away from any town, and we were ordered off. This region was called Sukhobezvodnoe (literally Dry-Without-Water) and there were about 15 camps here with perhaps 10,000 prisoners.

A several-hour long march in overpowering heat brought us to our destination which was more of a transit camp than a labour camp–though we we’d be put to hard labour almost immediately. Crude barracks surrounded by barbed wire and a wooden palisade with guard-towers on the corners. A forbidding and lonely place.

But dramatic news greeted us. Two days earlier on June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany had attacked her former ally the Soviet Union. So, the rumours were true! All the Polish prisoners were overjoyed as our traditional enemies were now at each other’s throat. Hitler and Stalin would destroy each other–and in the process lay our deliverance from the USSR. The Soviet prisoners thought we were crazy. No one ever escaped the USSR

But little did we realize that in the wake Operation Barbarossa, the Soviets were carrying out mass, panic-executions of prisoners in Poland. As many as 120,000 people, mostly Poles and Ukrainians, would be murdered in a matter of a few days by the Soviets in their cells or during evacuation to the USSR. We would only learn of the atrocities later. In the prisons of Lwów, the NKVD herded inmates into cellars and machine-gunned over 12,000 of them.

Elsewhere, prisoners including children, were scalded to death in hot water or had ear, eyes, noses cut off as NKVD sadists and their collaborators went on a rampage. Entire prison populations were being massacred by the NKVD who desperately bricked-up buildings full of corpses and still-living victims, even as the Wehrmacht was closing in.

In Dubno jail where I had just spent a year, Major Vinokur and his staff, many of then drunk, raced from cell to cell ordering prisoners to stand up and then spraying them with bullets. They would then enter the cells to finish off the wounded by shots to the head or with bayonets. Several hundred were murdered that way. In my hometown of Krzemieniec similar scenes were unfolding, though I would only learn of the mass-murders years later.

Teresa Trautman, Bronek Rumel, Jerzy Bronikowski, Ryszard Kasprycki, Tadeusz Majewski, and other friends and underground members, were murdered in Dubno on that day, or earlier as a result of torture or death sentences. Teresa’s mother went to the jail after the killings and was forced to search ankle-deep in dried blood for her daughter’s corpse even as German sanitation units were cleaning the cells in anticipation of more Polish prisoners. Teresa was buried in Dubno cemetery. Bronek’s body was never recovered. I had been transferred from Dubno and had missed these mass executions by barely three months. Only years later would I find out how close I came to death. This was another instance when fate seemed to have plucked me out just in the nick of time, and it would not be the last.

We were quickly put to work stripping cut trees and loading them into wagons. After months or years in prisons on starvation diets it was very hard work. Many women suffered hernias, broken limbs, or simply collapsed from exhaustion. Climbing through logs and stubble, I cut my legs and feet which, aggravated by insect bites, left me with chronic running sores. It was here that I would last menstruate for almost a year and a half. Under the conditions this was a godsend, though I often worried if I would return to being a woman again.

One day we were brought in early from work to a barrack and ordered to sit on stools and benches. The barrack was soon filled with prisoners, women and men. It was a trial. We were ordered to stand up as the circuit court entered to try three Polish officers for escape, two of them for thrice attempting the crime. A few words in Russian and the court sentenced them to death. The lesson was not lost on us.

Here I met Father Pluta who had been arrested at his parish in Wolyn and condemned to death. He was imprisoned in Kiev where his sentence was commuted to 10 years at hard labour, and he was here awaiting transfer to the labour-camps. But then some of us again were being taken on the transports. I quickly said goodbye to Father Pluta and to Granny who had been with me almost from the start, and who was remaining behind in a cell with Polish women who would take care of each other. I would never see her again, but Father Pluta I would, and we became lifelong friends.

This was a huge self-sustaining camp with over a thousand prisoners of whom about 200 were female. The major enterprise here was brick-making which included numerous kilns, as well as farming. The women were housed in a huge barrack separated from the rest of the camp by a metal net. Only Marzenka and a couple of others remained of our group, but additions were made including Ziuta Horodynska and Frania, a Jewish student from Lodz. In our barrack there were a number of political prisoners from Lwów, as well as Romanians, Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainian Poles, Gypsies, Tartars, and a large contingent of Russians. Some of these Russians were kept in their own dormitory which was accessible by a side door near the main entrance. Most of these were the cultural elite of Russia. Included was a conservatory professor who taught the camp commandant’s children and ran the prisoner’s choir, a singer from Radio Moscow, and a dancer from Tashkent who thrilled us with her Spanish dances and who’d been arrested because her husband was Polish. There were choreographers, directors and other talented people who were able to find hidden talent even among the thieves and prostitutes, and we enjoyed several amazing performances. The front part of our barrack was the territory of the blat [violent gangs of criminals]–killers, prostitutes and other criminals. Unfortunately, some of our younger Polish girls fell in with this lot and were lost, in spite of our efforts to keep them with us.

The Poles were put to work in the brick factory. A typical day began with rising at 3 a.m.and a bowl of soup with a bit of bread. By 4 a.m. we were standing in our work-brigades at the gate where the headcount would take place. This was a complicated affair as there were always stragglers or those who refused or were unable to go to work. The guards would drag prisoners from their bunks, beating and kicking them mercilessly. Most of them were simply too tired or sick to work and were at the point of death. All this activity would be accompanied by an accordionist, a fellow-prisoner, playing “uplifting” music from a platform. To some Soviet song, we’d at last march out past the forbidden zone where we’d be counted one last time before being given over to an armed guard who would intone: “A step to the left, a step to the right, will be seen as an escape and I’ll use my weapon without a warning!” By 5 in the morning we were required to be on our hour-long march to work supervised by the convoy commandant upon his huge horse.

The work was very heavy. I was with a group carrying pieces of clay to the kiln on large pallets with tandem handles, where they’d be baked into bricks, and carried back in a similar way. The bricks were still hot, and a huge hole was burned in my coat when my partner stumbled showering me with steaming bricks. We also transported raw clay in wheelbarrows along swaying planks. Mornings were cool while afternoons were blisteringly hot. Just before the sun reached it’s zenith, we were allowed a lunch break, though there wasn’t anything to eat except what one saved from breakfast–and this would be chewed slowly. We would drink a little water, roll cigarettes, and spend lunch break resting and talking. At 5 in the afternoon we’d be re-assembled into brigades, counted, and marched back to camp–a group of people barely able to lift their feet. For dinner in the mess hall, we’d receive a bowl of soup without bread. After our meal we could go to the sick ward, meet acquaintances, do laundry or sewing. It would be close to midnight when sleep would finally be possible, after the last headcount and when the conversations and activities stopped. We all tried to avoid the Kawecze [propaganda officer] whose job was to spread Soviet joy among us…just as we wanted to go to sleep. This position was usually filled by a junior official who made up for his stupidity and lack of imagination by persistence. But sleep, when it did come, was also an ordeal as we were tormented by fleas and lice as well as mosquitoes. The chronic lack of sleep and fatigue bothered most of us much more than the constant hunger, and together they spelled death for many of the older women.

Eventually the women were put into permanent work brigades: two Polish teams and several Soviet ones. Our brigade leader was Keller, a tough German who pushed us without pity. Thanks to her we were able to meet our work-quota and thus could feed from the best No. 1 cauldron. After several weeks of toiling under the relentless Keller, we discovered our group was featured on the bulletin board as a Stakhanovite brigade [workers who exceed quotas] that had been completing 140% of our quota, ahead of everyone else! We felt it a useless honor that was not worth the effort and fought with Keller who cut back her demands but maintained the discipline.

Some of the hardest work was in tending fields of potatoes and beets which involved carrying water in wooden buckets for long distances, sometimes uphill work that left every muscle screaming. My boots were too heavy for this summer work, and I preferred bare feet. As a result, the cuts and sores on my legs and feet deteriorated into a festering mess. But we also had the chance to steal a potato and eat it secretly. Other tasks given to our brigade was in the clearing of roots and rocks after a forest stand had been cut down. The summer heat was oppressive; lightning might flash but hardly a drop of rain ever fell. Our sunburn and blisters were treated by a balm which we smeared over our wounds or even drank in a diluted form as a cure for diarrhea. I covered myself head to foot with this stinking mess, as my leg and foot sores were spreading upwards while my mosquito bites were turning into chronic scabs.

On one of our foodless “lunch breaks” we heard a gunshot from the forest. We were too tired to think about it–but when we returned to camp we learned of a tragic death resulting from that single shot. On the transport here, my group had taken a vulnerable high school student under our wing. I was impressed how Julia Kosowska had regaled us with recitations of Polish poetry in our cattle car. But on arrival she’d fallen in with a gang of Russian criminals. We tried to convince her to join us, but she was controlled by the older women in the gang who used violence and manipulation. These leaders, covered in obscene tattoos and self-inflicted scars, even worked out deals with guards. The last time I saw Julia, her startling blue eyes were now dull and resigned.

I learned from other prisoners that Julia had been shot. That morning, she had gone around acting strangely and apologizing to members of her work brigade. At midday break, two cries of “Halt!” came from the forest. And then a single shot. Julia was killed while trying to escape, but we knew that it was suicide. But there were questions: the shot had come from a pistol, and the only person who carried one was the Convoy Commander. And the bullet had been fired at close range and from the front. Why had they not tried to stop her physically?

Her body was taken to the mortuary where one the women was able to go and say a prayer. She said that Juila’s eyes were open wide in surprise, but that she also seemed to be smiling. A special commission confirmed that she’d been shot at close range and from the front, but it was classified as an “escape attempt resulting in death.” The death certificate was signed by the notorious “Doctor” Lukas who also signed them for the Polish officers executed for escaping. Lukas was a hated figure, a Pole and supposedly a cleric, who was impersonating a doctor. The other camp doctors, Poles and Polish Jews, also prisoners themselves, were empathetic and tried to help even though there was little they could do. But Lukas was cruel and heartless talking to us in poor Russian. Everyone tried to stay clear of this collaborator, and he was treated with contempt.

Julia’s death was like that of an older Ukrainian woman in our work brigade. She understood nothing of the politics that sent her to the Gulag, and dreamt only returning to her home, thousands of kilometres away. Often, she’d ask a co-worker where her village was. “Over the mountains,” we’d say and point to the horizon, at which she’d stare as if her house was just over the next hill. One day she decided to walk back to her beloved family that needed her. She just dropped her tools and set off for her village. They shot her for trying to escape.

I was in my second year of captivity and at forced labour at that, but I still hadn’t been charged with any crime, much less sentenced for it. Some of the Polish women petitioned the camp commandant, who merely replied: “Don’t worry–you’ll get your sentence.” And despite the war, Moscow hadn’t forgotten about us. In the middle of July, we were summoned in a large group to the camp headquarters where each of us was called to a table and handed her “sentence” which we had to read and sign. I was found guilty under article 58 – 2 – 11 of the Soviet Penal Code for participation in a “revolutionary Polish Ukrainian organization.” I didn’t know what organization they were referring to, until I recalled the magazine Mloda Wies, taken from my home, which my interrogators had been obsessed with.

I received 8 years in a hard-labour camp, including forfeiture of property and denial of rights. It was in effect a death sentence as few survived the labour camps. Only two others received 8 years, most getting sentences of 3 and 5 years in a labour camp. Yet most of us felt that the German Soviet war would be our deliverance and that eventually freedom would come our way. If we could just hang on.

During the summer we’d sleep outside our barracks, preferring mosquitoes to lice and bedbugs. One night under the stars I opened my eyes–and saw nothing. The morning was a hazy landscape filled with vague shadows. I realized I was suffering from “chicken blindness” caused by avitaminosis, resulting in temporary blindness. Luckily at that time, as Stachanowki, we were receiving small sardines as reward for our work, and Marzenka slipped me her portion of fish so that my sight returned to normal. Loss of sight was merely a step to full-blown scurvy, and I met women who were losing teeth and hair, and who eventually died. We were working near the camp, where we quickly converted the overgrown gardens into a valuable source of vegetables. We were able to nibble on beets, cucumbers and other sources of vitamins and nourishment, as well as smuggling plants in our cuffs and clothing to women and men toiling in the brick yards and the forest. Besides being tormented by lice, fleas, ticks and mosquitoes, we had to contend with the black fly, which could drive a person mad with its incessant bites. We were pretty sights indeed swollen from black fly bites and covered in mud and preventative ointments. And what’s worse, Marzenka and several of us came down with an attack of the scabies. We were good workers so we received two days off, balm, and a sauna with soap.

One day at work we observed the Kawecze approaching us with papers under his arm. Who would be his victim today? But he seemed genuinely moved as he declared: “You Poles are going to freedom and together we’ll defeat the Germans!” Marzenka and I stared at each other. He then went on to read the agreement between the Polish Government-in-Exile and Moscow, signed in July 1941, in which the words “Polish Army” and “Amnesty” resounded. Stalin, facing defeat by Germany, agreed to utilize the Poles he’d deported (hundreds of thousands were already dead on his orders) to form a Polish army. We were infuriated that the Soviets were granting us an “amnesty” since we weren’t guilty of anything–but we were too elated to raise objections. The camp was abuzz with the news. Men brushed off their tattered uniforms and marched like soldiers again. On every Pole’s lips was the word “Freedom!” But other prisoners refused to believe it; never had they heard of such a thing happening in the Soviet Union.

But it was still off to work for us. The quotas had been met despite agreements between Stalin and Anders. None of us were going anywhere, except for one lucky woman who was released immediately because she was Polish American. We saw her off with waves as she left to be reunited with her husband and son also released from the camps. Did they ever make it back to America? That place seemed as distant and mythical as the moon.

In early September a group of seventeen prisoners, including myself, was called forth. All Poles except for two Russians. “Freedom!” we all exclaimed. But to our horror, we were not headed for freedom–but for Camp No. 6, which served as a punishment prison for Dry-Without-Water.

In desperation many of us turned to an old Romanian woman called “Moses” who had powers of prophecy. I paid her with a cigarette, and she lifted the blanket to her corner of the barracks. Here she foretold my future with the aid of dried bread-balls which she threw down on a cloth and “read.”

Moses told me my fate: “You will be separated from everybody and will be very sick and close to death. Your life will change for the better only in February, and you’ll find yourself in a place where there’s many women and few men. But then you’ll travel to where there’s few women and many men, and you’ll be sick here once more. Along the way you’ll also meet your future husband–but only very briefly, and you’ll not see each other for a long time. Eventually you’ll meet and get married.” It seemed totally improbable to me. Yet I made a note of it. In a few days we were transferred to the dreaded Punishment Camp Number 6.

Zone-Commander Sergei Zylin (a prisoner himself) was waiting at the gate. He announced that the amnesty meant absolutely nothing to him. We would follow rules like any other prisoner or suffer the consequences. To emphasize the severity of this camp, he slowly crushed a little mirror with his boot so that the sound of breaking glass could be heard. I kept my eyes down–it was my mirror!

This indeed was a punishment camp with a strict regimen and brutal conditions, where those who’d violated rules in other camps were sent to serve their sentence or await trial. It was feared by all prisoners and was considered a death sentence. I would survive for half a year here. The population fluctuated between 500 and 900, of whom only 25 were women. On the right side of the gate was a large bunkhouse surrounded by a wooden palisade and barbed wire in which were housed prisoners awaiting trail. I shuddered every time I looked at this forlorn building, not realizing that I would live some two months there in a tiny cell during the coldest winter months.

At the start most of the women were put to work sawing and stacking timber while a few lucky ones went to the laundry, or better yet the kitchen. Marzenka and I joined an invalid men’s brigade picking berries in the woods and fields, which was led by the Korean Dimitri Ten, a Captain of Artillery, and a decent and noble person. Our berry-hunting took us to the “Polish Cemetery” in which Poles from the so-called “volunteer” emigrations of 1940 and 1941, as well as recent prisoners, were buried in mass graves. There was a saying that anyone showing signs of swelling due to malnutrition was “setting off for the Polish cemetery.”

There were other reminders of Poles who had been exiled here as part of a “tradition” which spanned centuries, during which Polish patriots fighting Russian imperialism were deported to Siberia. The Tsar had been replaced by Stalin who did things on a much grander scale. I slept for a time on a top bunk near the ceiling where I discovered an inscription in a child’s handwriting: “Flows the River Wisla across the Polish countryside, And so long as it flows Poland will not perish…” It was signed: “Zosia and Marysia, two children deported for who knows what.” Every time I lay down to to sleep, I thought about these two girls.

We often picked berries in icy swamp water, sometimes to our knees, wearing lapcie, shoes woven from tree-bark, which became waterlogged or stretched out of shape. Periodically Dimitri Ten would ask the guard for a rest during which a fire would be built and we’d dry our shoes and clothes. And during all this time I never even sneezed once! I later got a job in making lapcie and became quite adept at stripping and preparing the bark and weaving it into footwear. It was nice and quiet work. I still have to this day a pair of shoes which I wove with my own hands.

During the dangerous work of extinguishing a forest fire, we discovered a growth of strange mushrooms. An old Chinese prisoner in charge of a horse team, assured us they were fine. We built a fire and roasted mushroom after delicious mushroom. But a few hours later I had diarrhea and a high fever…and became so sick that they allowed me a day off. But only one day and then it was back to work. Unable to eat anything, I gave my soup to Spittalow, from Lwów, who had scurvy and could barely see. She brought me kipiatok which I tried to drink. Turning to folk remedies I nibbled charcoal as an antidote, but my condition worsened. My limbs began to swell and then my whole body became bloated. Soon my feet and legs were like balloons, and my face a bag of jelly that rolled to whatever side I was sleeping on. I was faced with the isolation cell if I refused to work, but I could barely walk. I realized I was bound for the Polish cemetery and started to prepare myself for death.

But Brigade Leader Ten then assigned me to scrubbing floors in the kitchen. I was allowed to work for a few hours and then go back and rest in my bunk. I ate cereal and corn gruel with fish oil, but it didn’t help–the swelling got even worse. But what did save my life was some wild honey. One of the Russian kitchen staff, Sonia Pantalejow, traded bread and soup for it with a male forester. The honey was green and smelled of pine needles–slowly licking it in secret, I could feel it coursing through my weakened system. This saved my life, and in a few days I was back to normal, as normal as one could be in a slave-labour camp on a starvation diet with no medical care.

In October about a dozen prisoners were freed. All men except for Wanda Krawczak who was let go because her foot infection made her a liability. I shared several camps with her, and it always turned out that she was transferred first, and the rest of us would follow. We assumed it would be the same procedure. I loaned Wanda some shoes (my swollen feet could only fit into an old pair of boots given to me by Sonja) and told her to take care of them as I’d need them for dancing–I expected to join her in freedom shortly.

Two days later a much larger list of prisoners was announced. It included all the Poles, both men and women. Except for me! I immediately ran to the camp office where the secretary, a Russian prisoner herself, could only confirm that my name was not among the lucky ones. That evening there were celebrations in the bathhouse: women at one end and the men at the other. They all had plans to join the Polish Army forming in the south. My friends laughed as they had not for years, but I sat among them like a mourner at a funeral. The women tried to cheer me up that I too would be celebrating in a day or two, but I didn’t believe them. I learned that there were other Polish prisoners being kept behind: two Poles in the punishment cells, a young Jewish lawyer from Kraków, and several Polish Ukrainian women with heavy sentences who were re-classified as Soviets despite their Polish citizenship. I begged Marzenka to notify the Polish Army and other authorities to help get us out.

I returned to the barracks in a state of dejection–my heart felt like a cinder after the last flame of hope was extinguished. I lay down on my bunk and sought the only freedom available to me–sleep. The next morning, I watched my friends walk out of Camp Number 6 as free people. They were ragged scarecrows, but they walked tall and with their heads up. Captain Kowalski was wearing his Polish officer’s uniform which he’d miraculously saved; later he’d marry Wanda Krawczak in the Middle East but would perish fighting the Germans near Bologna. The women shouted to me that we’d all be reunited in the Polish Army. And then I recalled the first part of the prophecy of Moses: “You will be separated from everybody else.” Indeed, I was one of the few Poles left in the entire camp–and the only woman.

The duo of Baranowski and Czarnokonski, were in an isolation cell for sharing a joke about the Soviet newspapers Izvestia (which means news) and Pravda (which means truth). The punch line was that “There is no news in Pravda and no truth in Izvestia.”

There were also two Ukrainian women who were Polish citizens. Sonja Gregorowicz, 45 years old and a devout Orthodox believer, was serving time because her brother had fought with the Polish Legions in the Polish Soviet War. The other was Olga Przepiorska with whom I struck up a friendship. She had been sentenced to 25 years by the Soviets because of her Ukrainian nationalism. She had also been involved in anti-Polish activities in the 1930’s, in which she carried a bomb in her knapsack to assassinate a Polish official in Lwów. Olga told me that the Polish authorities had found her not guilty due to her young age and allowed her to continue with her studies. In Poland she had graduated, married and established a family, but under Soviet rule she was imprisoned and tortured, and her husband and brother sentenced to death. She knew she would die here.

There was also Dr. Reczynski, a fierce Ukrainian nationalist who had spent time in the Bereza Kartuska prison in Poland where revolutionaries of all stripes were interred before the war. He would never give me a day off. As well there was a former member of the Polish Sejm, Kohuta, who died shortly after the Poles departed, and in his case, Reczynski couldn’t forgive the authorities for not taking him to the hospital.

I also befriended a former Polish army settler while working in the kitchen. His legs were horribly swollen, and I tried to cheer him up that we’d all be set free in February (I counted on the prophecy of Moses!). One day he wasn’t at his usual spot at peeling potatoes, and I was told he’d died. I didn’t even know his name. There also was the handsome Jewish lawyer from Kraków who spoke several languages but said little, answering with a shy smile. He collapsed one day working in the forests and was thrown on a sled heading back to camp. He returned as a frozen corpse.

One morning from the kitchen I heard the shouting of guards. We ran out and saw a Polish prisoner climbing the fence surrounding the isolation barrack, from where he’d escaped. The guards fired two shots in the air. He wouldn’t stop and was almost to the top when a shot came from the guard tower. The prisoner fell to the ground and with a horrible last spasm died. The man had been kept in solitary confinement for stealing other prisoner’s rations and had become crazed while in isolation. He had managed to break from the barracks–but escape from the camp was impossible and like so many, he chose death.

It’s so true that a well-fed person cannot understand the starving one. I had been malnourished continuously for a long time, but the hunger which forces every cell to scream only started in Punishment Camp Number 6 in the fall of 1941. For the second time my body began to bloat as prelude to death by starvation. My hunger was so overwhelming that stones looked like loaves of bread, and I wanted to chew bark and leaves. I prepared myself for death.

But a few weeks after my friends had left, I was ordered on the kitchen night shift. Once more my life was saved by chance, or fate. A woman was caught stealing, and the supervisor complained that he only wanted honest Poles. There was only one Pole left–me. The cook saved the best for himself and his staff: thick servings scooped from the bottom of the kettle over which was poured fish grease. And we could eat as many baked potatoes as we could. I stuffed myself so much that I found it hard to scrub the floor. And yet my body screamed for protein and vitamins. We often gutted and prepared small greasy fish; by boiling them we extracted pure grease—which I drank with a bit of bread. It was heaven. During my several months in the kitchen, my swelling subsided, but the scabs on my legs would not fully heal. At least I was alive.

I worked in the kitchen from 7 at night to 8 in the morning when I would collapse on my bunk. I’d start each shift by preparing meals with fish, cucumbers, potatoes, tomatoes, which was the regular prison food. For those prisoners who worked in the “office” or at other special duties there were perks. These were opportunists and traitors who profited at the expense of those who worked hard. On top of regular rations they received pasta and grain dishes as well as treats made from fruit. They ate well while others starved to death.

I stole food from the kitchen. Otherwise, I would have perished. But I also smuggled fish and potatoes in the laundry or in my apron to help the starving–particularly two older women, both very religious, who were awaiting trial for refusing to work for a godless system. Such a refusal was considered sabotage by the Soviets, and execution faced them. In exchange for little scraps of food, they darned my clothes.

Camp Commander had been replaced shortly after we’d arrived, amid rumors that too many prisoners were dying and work-quotas were suffering. The NKVD assigned a more “humane” official. He increased food levels and even managed to get a boxcar of frozen chickens, geese and rabbits. But this was nothing in the long run. We were allotted three or four chickens for a pot that was to feed four hundred people toiling hard in freezing conditions. And that was the first kettle reserved for the hardest working! The second one had a few small fishes while the third contained rejects from the second.

Cutting frozen and salty fish was hard work; my fingers ached, and it was impossible to avoid cutting oneself. Part of my job was to throw scales and intestines in the trash pit at the end of the camp. It was here that prisoners on their last legs, unable to work and not receiving rations, would come to feed on what was considered unfit for human consumption. Dr. Reczynski decreed that I should start throwing the remains into the latrine pits as the situation was “unsanitary.” This was done and the scavengers soon disappeared–most likely dead from starvation. A week later I came upon a pitiful sight at the latrine. A group of men looking like scarecrows was engaged in fishing the entrails from the human waste with sticks! They would place their catches on filthy rags–and even fight over them. Several of these poor souls drowned in the latrines and the others soon died off. That winter up to eight people were dying daily from hunger, freezing and overwork. Several times I visited the mortuary which was overflowing with stiff bodies stacked like cords of wood, waiting to be buried in the “Polish cemetery.” These corpses bore little resemblance to humans: limbs and faces swollen and covered in wounds, while backbones poked though collapsed stomachs. The evil Dr. Reczynski claimed that come spring the death toll would be even higher.

This prison was full of the worst–and the best of humanity. Murderers, rapists and assorted criminals, some of whom stepped into positions of guards and interrogators for the camp authorities. They took great pleasure in beating and tormenting other prisoners. Among the most noble was Wasyli Stepanowicz Powierynow, director of the kitchen. An actor by profession, he’d recite poetry, act out passages, and entertain us as we worked. Our small group of Poles and political prisoners formed a plan in case the prison was abandoned by the Soviets, leaving us at the mercy of the criminal element which outnumbered us. Their first act would be an attack on the food supplies, followed by a slaughter of the political. We set up areas near the morgue to hide food and make a stand. We didn’t know that in the event of German incursion, the NKVD would liquidate us, as they had done in previous situations.

In January we were all given a clean bill of health–even those who were clearly dying. More workers were needed to meet production quotas for lumber. The kitchen staff was pronounced fit enough to go back to the forest as were others on “light” duty. Wasily Stepanowicz, the cook Mitka and I, formed the core of the “kitchen-fire” brigade as we were referred to. I was a suczkozog whose job was to build and maintain fires to burn branches, and for warmth and cooking. We received new winter clothing: tielogreyki – pants made of quilted material, watneje czulki – cotton leggings, as well as hats with earmuffs, gloves and fresh lapcie.

Reveille was at four in the morning with the usual counting, grumbling and even fighting. A list would be read aloud of those sentenced to death for refusing to work. At 5 a.m. we’d be handed tools by guards who warned against trying to escape, and in single-file, or in pairs, we’d make our way through huge snowdrifts patrolled by guards on skis. If it was extremely cold, we would be given black Vaseline to smear on our faces for protection. According to regulations, temperatures of -40C were considered too cold for work–but only once were we held back. That day I lay on my bunk bundled up and waiting, while a neighbor told me stories of the diedmot, bands of children, that roamed the countryside as bandits and were even bold enough to attack trains.

Each brigade had its section and quota of lumber. This involved felling the trees, cleaning them of bark and branches, cutting it into timber, and stacking the product for removal on horse-drawn wagons or sledges. I had to start and maintain up to four fires at one time. Even in the coldest weather a few embers would remain of the previous day’s fire which made my job easier, and warmed everybody until the sun came up. Lunch was the most enjoyable time. Every day a soldier would arrive on skis with a shipment of mahorka [tobacco substitute made from plants] which would be given only to those who fulfilled 100% of production. Some mahorka would be shaken into your little bag called a kiset–and with a bit twisted paper you’d soon have a cigarette. We’d then sit around the fire and exchange stories. One fascinating conversationalist was a Doctor of Philosophy from Hungary who had been a compatriot of Bela Kun, and had been part of the bloody communist takeover of Hungary in 1919. He and the whole leadership had been invited to Russia by Stalin where they were entertained and praised by Soviet propaganda–only to be then either executed or sent into the camps. Poetic justice!

There were strange and tragic occurrences in the forest. A mechanic from a labour-camp in the north, serving time for insubordination, refused to do any more work. He lay down beside one of my fires and fell asleep. Suddenly a horrible scream echoed through the forest. I beheld a human torch thrashing about wildly–it was our mechanic. Powierynow rolled the man across the snow and ripped off his flaming clothing…but the man suffered horrible burns. The Kawecze showed up and wrote down the details. The tielogrieka, gloves and other state property had been damaged: a clear case of sabotage! Naked and burned, the man was taken back to camp at the end of the day and thrown into an isolation cell to await his trail. We could hear him screaming for days before he died.

I was witness to cases of suicide and mutilation. Those who suffered accidents or frostbite could be released from work for a time…and some exposed themselves deliberately (I recall seeing many victims with blackened appendages or with toes and fingers missing). Work-brigades even caused accidents to claim the food of the victim. I once witnessed two men staging an “accident” in the forest. The “victim” placed his hand on the trunk of a selected tree and awaited a cut tree to fall his way–a horrible scream and the deed was done! The guards arrived, but the victim and his partner were charged with sabotage. It was very difficult to fool the NKVD. Amazingly it was much easier to cheat in work quotas. This process called tufta involved double counting and rotating production for a second time, as well as bribing the counters and guards. The cutting of trees was risky. One member of my brigade had both her legs broken when she couldn’t get out of the way, while another woman was struck in the head. Someone began screaming “Mazgi!” [brains] as it appeared that the woman’s brain had been exposed. But the branch merely scalped her, and the skin was sewn back. It was this accident that shook me from thoughts of suicide which had been haunting me through the days of February. I’d been circling trees planning an end that would be quick–but I’d always run away. Years later this memory dissuaded me from thoughts of suicide in the London subway.

I witnessed the degeneration of the giant Miedwiediew, strong as a bear, and the leading worker in camp. But a few short months of the Gulag transformed him into a dochadiaga [beggar] scrounging for scraps. He simply could not survive on food that barely sustained people half his size.

I worked in the kitchen from 7 at night to 8 in the morning when I’d collapse on my bunk. I’d start each shift by preparing meals with fish, cucumbers, potatoes, tomatoes, which was the regular prison food. For those prisoners who worked in the “office” or at other special duties there were perks. These were opportunists and traitors who profited at the expense of those who worked hard. On top of regular rations, they received pasta and grain dishes as well as treats made from fruit. They ate well while others starved to death.

The Camp Commander had been replaced shortly after we’d arrived, amid rumors that too many prisoners were dying and work-quotas were suffering. The NKVD assigned a more “humane” official. He increased food levels and even managed to get a boxcar of frozen chickens, geese and rabbits. But this was nothing in the long run. We were allotted three or four chickens for a pot that was to feed four hundred people toiling hard in freezing conditions. And that was the first kettle reserved for the hardest working! The second one had a few small fishes while the third contained rejects from the second.

The last days of February were unusually warm. We were marching back after a day’s work where my brigade had exceeded the quota. I was happy I’d receive portions from the first kettle. And tomorrow was a rare “free” day where inspection would take place, and we could sleep longer, do laundry or visit each other. I then recalled the prophecy of Moses and realized that it was the end of February, and I was still in prison. So much for her prediction of being released that month.

Settled in my bunk, I was roused by a soft voice: “Jana, you’re going to your freedom.” It was the Russian secretary from the office, the same one with whom I had pleaded about not being released. Was I dreaming? Was this a cruel joke? But the booming voice of Zylin, now demoted to a senior guard, confirmed that it wasn’t a lie: “Jana, go to Ola and tell her you’re going to freedom. Turn in your prison clothes and report to the baths.”

On March 1, 1942, I walked out of Punishment Camp Number 6, a free woman at last. It was almost exactly two years ago that the NKVD had come to arrest me at my family home in Krzemieniec. I was leaving one chapter and moving on to the next in an adventure that was far from complete–without knowing if my family was alive or dead.

Accompanying me were the “jokers” Baranowski and Czarnokonski, released from solitary, and two Russian thieves. I was overjoyed at my liberation, but I also realized that my source of prison food, meager as it was, had been eliminated. Luckily, I had Soviet-made boots which I’d bought for bread while working in the kitchen–otherwise I’d be negotiating snowy freedom in my bare feet. The rest of my attire included my old coat with the burned-out hole, a warm hat, and one woollen mitt.

We travelled by rail to a central point in Dry-Without-Water where I met a Polish mother and daughter whom I’d known in Camp No. 2, and who had also been released that day. Here I also befriended Maniuta Nowakowska who’d arrived from another camp, and who theorized that her late release was because she was born in Berlin. Perhaps that my birthplace was in Russia similarly accounted for my 6-month extension, after most of the surviving Poles had been released. Maniuta and I decided to team up.

Our group had identification photographs taken by a former reporter from Lwów who even made us extra copies. Maniuta and I decided to travel south to Buzuluk, the headquarters of the new Polish Army in the USSR. We’d follow the path of thousands of Poles–men, women and children–who were determined to join the army or seek its protection. The way was full of hardships and death. The mother and daughter opted to stay in Dry-Without-Water as “free” citizens and set up a tailoring business at which they had excelled in prison. Baranowski and Czarnokonski set out without any destination in mind–shouting from the train that we’d all meet in the Polish Army!

Maniuta and I got as far as Gorky, and there we got stuck. The trains were full of soldiers heading for the front against the Germans who were pushing into Russia, and civilians were out of luck. The station was crowded and the town under a black-out–and we had little food. Despair was gripping us, when I beheld a poster with familiar writing…it took me several seconds to realize I was reading Polish! It gave directions to the local Polish Delegature, set up to aid Poles. At the Delegature we were warmly greeted and given a bath and a meal. But we learned that the Polish Army wasn’t taking any more people, and even worse we didn’t have Soviet permission to stay in Gorky. We were directed to a small village near Gorky and advised to remain there until opportunities arose. The Delegature promised to keep in touch.

Some news that lifted my spirits was that Jakub Hoffman was alive, having been released by the Soviets in Gorky in January, and was now with the Polish Embassy in Kuybishev. General Sikorski, the Polish Prime Minister and Commander in Chief, and Stanilsaw Kot, Ambassador to the USSR, had intervened on his behalf with Stalin himself. For the second time he put on the uniform of a Polish Captain and would be appointed as Embassy representative in Uzbekistan. I made an appeal to him at once, for help in joining the Polish Army and getting out us of our predicament here. The USSR was doing much to hamper Poles trying to get to the army. Jews and Ukrainians from Poland were being classified as Soviet citizens to keep them out of the Polish army and to create dissension.