1. Danuta’s Story – The Background to Deportation
1. Dana’s Story – The background to Deportation Danuta was born in Hutka, near Slonim, in 1925. Her father, Stanislaw, was responsible for the Albertyn Estate for Count Wladyslaw Puslowski, whom he had befriended while in Austrian captivity in the First World War. Stanislaw had studied in St Petersburg. During the unrest in1905 he […]
2. The Road to Exile
Vilnius – Siberia – Altaisk It was June 1941 and I was 16 years old. I was walking down Wielka Street on my way back from Zakret where I had been taking an examination in PE for my School Certificate. We had had to run both a 100 metre and a 500 metre race and […]
3. Arrival in Exile
3. Arrival in Exile Aleisk, Kedrovka, Charysh We stopped at Aleisk, a small town between Omsk and Tomsk having left behind us Novosibirsk and Barnaoul. We were directed towards an empty barn that appeared to have been used as a joiner’s workshop. We made sleeping bags from our blankets. But what we really needed was […]
4. Return to Charyshkoye
Return to Charyshskoye When we returned to Charyshskoye, we were billeted on some locals. We had to go through our landlord’s kitchen to get to our room. It was September and autumn here is very short but as yet , we weren’t suffering from the cold. On the other hand, it was very difficult to […]
5. Real Life in Exile
5. Real Life in Exile We had to change lodgings. Unfortunately, not for the better. On the one hand, we didn’t miss our disagreeable landlady. We now lived in a bedroom-cum-kitchen with a separate entrance in a house situated at the other end of the village near the road to Alejsk. On the other hand, […]
6. Goodbye to Siberia
To begin with we had to get food. My father and brother had to make several trips to the neighbouring villages to try and exchange clothes and household linen for food. They saw half-naked children in many houses, yet their parents refused with regret to exchange food in case they hadn’t enough to last until […]
7. The Polish Army
General Ander’s Army We reached the town of Guzar in Uzbekistani Soviet Sociaist Republic. Many people had already died there after a previous outbreak of typhus, but luckily for us, the epidemic had ended by the time of our arrival. The three of us joined the army: my father as a Reserve officer, my brother […]
8. The Last Month in the USSR
There were fewer and fewer sick soldiers and civilians in the field hospital set up in the mosque in Guzar. Despite this people still died there in large numbers and from time to time I was both saddened and moved to see the hospital cart pulled slowly by a horse towards an improvised cemetery. You […]
9.Across the Caspian Sea to Persia
The good news finally came – there was a train! Accustomed to military discipline we marched to the station in full military dress loaded down with haversacks, mess tins and water bottles. We reached the railway station completely exhausted but there wasn’t a train. Would it ever come? Finally, it arrived. Our patience was almost […]
10. Persia and Our Journey through Iraq
During the day we walked up and down the fields and bought eggs and tomatoes very cheaply from the villages. We fried them in our mess tins on campfires and ate them in large quantities. Such rich, fatty food was dangerous for our undernourished bodies and many of our fellow countrymen and women died as […]