Testimonies – Soviet Forced Labour

Jan describes how they managed to sneak loaves of bread after his brother is assigned to a delivery job during forced labour in the USSR.

Krystyna describes the work her mother did during the winter – maintaining the ice rails that were used to slide the wood out of the forest.

Stan explains how only the children of the camp staff were sent to school. Consequently, the women got together and started a home schooling program for the Polish children. They …

Kazimierz describes the amenities in the camp.

Wanda describes the stove in the center of the barrack that was used for cooking, and the rotten vegetables they would be given.

Czeslaw explains how he and his brother worked as goat shepherds, which provided them with more food during the short summer months. He also describes the death of his 2 …

Jan describes the work that his father and sister had to do, as well as the food rations they were given.

Jan tells how they would gather berries, mushrooms and tree sap in the forest, to help them survive.

Jan describes how the bodies of those who died during winter months would be piled outside, waiting for burial in the spring. Not knowing any better, the children would play …

Maria describes the way they had to live when they arrived at the kolkhoz.

Maria tells how her mother took to fortune-telling in exchange for food during the winter months, thereby allowing them to survive.

Describing how her mother would sneak out of the camp to go to the local village and sell things at market, both for herself and for others in the camp.

Eugenia describes how she and a friend went to pick mushrooms in the forest and got lost. Luckily they managed to find their way back to the camp.

Describing how the Russian teacher could not get the children to sing on Good Friday. The children knew instinctively that this was not done.

Maria describes how devoted she was to her grandmother, and how she was present when her grandmother died.

Andrzej shows a drawing by Alicja Edwards and explains how this drawing epitomizes for him the entire experience of the deportation. He then reads a text about the death of …

Alex describes his decision to leave home at age 16 to join the Polish Army being formed in France. He goes on to say that his time in the USSR …

Describing how the younger deportees at the camp remained hopeful that they would one day make it out of there.

Tadeusz describes the work they completed at the camp in Siberia, and the how they made their way out after ‘amnesty’.

Explaining how the collective farm was 50 km from the Chinese border, with very harsh winters, and the Poles were forced to make bricks from the snow and build a …

Describing the various measures they took to get rid of the bedbugs. Also describing the work in the forest, including the branches that the school children would gather and burn …

Halina describes how she would pick berries and then sell them in the nearest town, in order to earn money to buy some food for the family.

Halina describes the German settlement that was located near their village, where she would go to exchange some of their belongings for food.

Halina describes the work she did, as a 12 year old, at the collective farm in Uzbekistan.