Bolesław Makowski - Underground set forest fires

Describing how they would start fires in the forest in order to get triple bread rations.

Bolesław Makowski - Work 5 years for a goat

Describing how the commandant of the camp told him he could get a goat after 5 years of hard work.

Bolesław Makowski - Czudak the horse

Describing how he was assigned to work with a sleigh and a horse called Czudak, and also describing the woman who was in charge of the stable.

Bolesław Makowski - Sharing food in Siberia

Describing how people would share anything but food, and when someone did share their food, it was a mark of extreme courage.

Bolesław Makowski - the camp store

Describing the strange and limited contents of the camp store.

Bolesław Makowski - millions of bedbugs

Describing the infestations of bedbugs

Elzbieta (Komar) Watrach - Mother was jailed

Describing how her mother went to the town to sell their belongings, and was arrested and jailed on her return.

Eugenia (Piotuch) Smolnicki - Tried to save bread for her mother

Eugenia describes how she kept wanting to save part of her bread so that she could bring it to her starving mother, but she was so hungry herself that she

Maria (Załuska) Strońska - Saved drowning girl in Siberia

Describing how she saved a girl named Wanda from drowning in the river in Siberia.

Feliks (junior) Scazighino - What helped them survive

Describing how their mother would sell valuables that she had brought from Poland, and how this helped them survive and leave the USSR.

Feliks (junior) Scazighino - Hard life in exile

Describing how he had to work in the fields at age 6 1/2 !!

Ludwik Cytera - Written biography of Ludwik Cytera

This is the life story of Ludwik Cytera as discovered and written up by his grandson Christopher Cytera.

Dioniza (Gradzik) Choros - Conditions at the camp

Dioniza describes the work that the adults and the children did at the camp.

Bernarda (Karbowa) Andrejczuk - How were the Russians in Siberia

Bernarda describes how the Russian people who preceded them to the camp, and were still stuck there, were in the same situation as they were – sometimes their conditions were

Antoni Stelmach - Siberian Husky

Antoni talks about the dog that was his companion while at the camp – a stray Siberian Husky that may have been left behind by those who had preceded them

Halina (Myszak) Babinska - 12 year old works at Kolkhoz

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

Halina (Myszak) Babinska - German settlement in N Kazakhstan

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

Halina (Myszak) Babinska - Picking and selling berries

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.

Zofia (Dudek) Kogut - Bedbugs and work in Siberia

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

Jerzy Wiktor Bockenhein - Building a brick wall from snow

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

Tadeusz Marczak - Camp in Siberia and then Amnesty

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

Aleksandra (Jarmulska) Rymaszewska - Youth keeps up their morale

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

Boguslaw Aleksander Topolski - About Hunger

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

Andrzej Wieslaw Dębicki - Murdered by Typhoid

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

Maria Nowotarska Kołodzińska - Grandmother dies in Russia

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