Calling the past back to my mind is a sad and horrible thing. I will try to give an explanation in an abridged version.
I was born in 1916. In 1934 I finished the Prokopievsk technical college for mining and was sent out to the “Koksovoye” pit for work.
Then, in 1936, a traumatic event: I broke my left arm. In the same year my brother lost his life in the mine. In 1937 my second brother, the elder Stanislaus, was arrested. And up to this day there has been no further information about his fate. Also in 1937 the People’s Committee of Mining Industry gave me an award for high efficiency and performance at work (coal mining) – a wristwatch with engraved name.
In 1939 I finished the three-class school “Master of socialist work,” without having been exempted from my occupation during that time, and was given a job as a mining master.
On the 13th of January 1942 I buried my mother, and 10 days later they took me to the NKVD.
As of this moment I started suffering hell on earth.
The investigator knew very well that I was not guilty of anything at all; nevertheless he said:
“You can be sure that we are not going to set free anybody, who we once arrested.” He carried out the preliminary inquiry in a very rude manner; he tore my clothes and started a file. I was told to sign the document in the presence of prosecutor Khvorostenko, but I refused to do so, since the investigating officer had drawn up the file without having heard my statement. In front of the eyes of the prosecutor he tore the paper into pieces and started with the investigation from the beginning again. He drew up a new file – and once again I was told to put my signature below. I refused. They took me away.
A couple of days later they led me to the head of the NKVD, Kononov, at nighttime, where there also was his deputy Malinin and another person, whose family name I did not know. They forced me to undress completely and then started kicking me with their feet; all three of them wore boots. They seized me, lifted me to the ceiling, and then threw me to the ground by applying all their energies. And thus I decided that I did not want to be slowly tormented to death within the walls of the NKVD, but that it would be better if they shot me, and I asked them not to kill me: I would be prepared to sign every kind of paper they intended to put in front of me. After that they put me into a single cell, where I refused food and asked for a doctor.
I had signed the file and was now waiting for the legal proceedings. The trial was attended by court personal and staff members of the NKVD. I was asked two questions: Did I admit my guilt? Although they had previously prepared me for confessing my guilt, I replied: “No.” Second question: “Why did you sign the file?” And I answered: “Some human being is chasing a wild animal in the woods, forcing it to do something that is convenient to him, and I am a human being.” They told me that although they had already kept me in the NKVD prison for quite a long time, I remained with a complete lack of understanding. That on the contrary, I had even slandered the organs of the NKVD, as if they would force the arrestees to do things that had just come up to their minds. They pronounced the judgment on me: maximum penalty - shooting by a firing squad …
After the trial I was again asked to appear before the head of the NKVD, where they tried to repeat the “execution” – this time considering that I had not admitted my guilt, but then they somehow decided not to do so. I expressed my agreement to sign some paper obviously necessary to them and put my name under the document in question.
As some prisoners later told me I took leave of my senses and tried to put an end to my life, to commit suicide, but the arrestees would not allow this.
After that I was kept as a condemned man in a death cell in Novisibirsk for 58 days, the so-called “bear’s cage.” At night they called me out and led me and another prisoner out of the death cell. He was determined “to go to the front” and my case was supposed to undergo a follow-up examination. I was taken to the town of Prokopievsk, where they sentenced me to 10 years and transported me to Gornaya Shoriya, where I worked in a pit for the mining of iron ore. After all, I was a miner. After the war I was moved to the station of Yaya in the Kemerovo region. There I was not accompanied by armed guards anymore and worked in the “Gortop” pit in the town of Andzhero-Sudzhensk, where they used to mine coal by hand.
Six months before the expiration of the term of my imprisonment they sent me to the region of Karaganda, where there were prisoners with a term of 25 years. In this region family names did not exist; they just wore a letter and a number on their jackets, on the front and on the back of their uniforms, as well as on the trousers at knee level. The release from custody approached and they sent me to the town of Krasnoyarsk, where I was finally set free.