Barbara
Olendzka (married Slobodzyanek) was arrested in Bialystok in
1944 at the age of 30. She passed through the prisons of Ostashkov and Kalinin, where she was pronounced her sentence: 8 years. She
travelled to the station of Chum (between Inta and Vorkuta) by a
prisoner transport and from there to one of the forced labour camp sub-sectors of the Petchorlag. In 1949 she was sent to the Ozerlag, together with
other political prisoners, not far from the Taishet-Bratsk road. The last three years of her term she worked in the hospital zone near
Chuksha station, Chunsk district, region of Irkutsk, and was then sent to the
Yenisseysk district into exile.
The year 1952 came to a close, but I was not supposed to spend the Christmas holiday in the hospital laboratory: there was a roll call and they said I would be released. Although I had spent 8 years and 2 months in prisons and camps, they told me that I would be released early. They had „credited“ me a certain number of days for having carried out „highly-productive labour“. The time I had been detained in prison, however, was not deducted from the sentence.
Before saying goodbye, my friends tried to find me some better clothes. Basya Dumnitska had knitted a beautiful dress made of threads, which she had pulled out of a blanket. Zosya Lekhovich and Maryanka had sewn a new, wadded blanket from cotton wool and absorbent gauze. Zosya Lekhovich always used to receive parcels from her relatives in Lvov, who sometimes succeeded to hide in them letters and money. Now she was prepared to give me some of the money to take along.
The Christmas days and New Year’s Eve I spent in the transit camp in Taishet. Unfortunately, I was the only Polish woman there. In January 1953 we were transported away from the Taishet transit camp to Krasnoyarsk, where I was pronounced my new sentence: exile for life. It was strictly forbidden to leave the assigned place of residence on one’s own initiative, and I had to get checked and registered at the commandant’s office once a month.
In the Krasnoyarsk prison they organized a true „fair“ of slave work force, almost „free of charge“. And then there was the medical commission. Those, who were a little stronger, were assigned work in the forestry , while the so-called „goners“ were assigned tasks on the collective farms. Since I had worked for the hospital for a couple of years before, there was no reason to count me among the „goners“.
During my stay in the transit prison in Taishet and later in the prison in Krasnoyarsk I often talked to Anna Lazareva, a very interesting and clever Jewess. She obviously had done some great service to communism. She had spent most of her lifetime in France and had several times appeared as counsel for the defense of Communists, who had been put on trial. The Dimitrov action was one of them. She had lived in France for many years, but not dealt with politics during the first time, when she spared no effort to learn the French language, until she was able to speak it like her own mother tongue, and avoid anything that might have evoken suspicion. Due to her Communist basic attitude, she had broken with her daughter, not even knowing in which country she was living. She was also ever active in Communist propaganda. Her husband actively took part in the Communist’s fight against the Chinese state power. Apparently, he also had done something wrong, since he had been sentenced to 15 years.
I met quite a lot of such propagandists anbd Polish women in the transit camp in Taishet. After numerous interesting discussions in the entirely crowded cells of the prison in Krasnoyarsk we finally were transported away to some new place. At temperatures of –58 degrees we had to get on a bus, which took us to the district of Yenisseysk, to some timber industry enterprise. On our way the bus got stuck in snowdrifts, and we had to push and draw the vehicle out all night long, in terrible coldness, without disposing of warm clothes and boots. Finally, towards morning, we arrived in Yenisseysk, and from there continued our ride by sledge, across the frozen river Yenissey to the right riverbank – to Zyryanka. Then they sent me and some other women to the so-called middle section. There were two barracks – one for men, the other for women. There was not a single Pole, but I became friends with a Yakut girl – Motya Pavlova. This simple but honest and good girl soon took a likeing to me. We worked in the forest every day: cut off the branches of felt trees, collected and burned them and cleared away the snow from the trees, so that one could approach with a petrol saw without any hindrance.
We had to walk a distance of seven kilometers to get to work, and the same distance back again in the evening – at temperatures of –30 to –40 degrees. We found it hard to walk under these conditions – we got stuck in the snow up to our knees. One of us would walk ahead, while the others tried to follow her footsteps. Later I made myself some kind of skis from simple boards, 15 cm in width, which I tied to my feltboots by means of a string. When we marched out to work in the morning it was still dark, and in the evening we returned in the dark, too. We were supplied lunch, but only used to slurp the soup: we did not have enough money available to afford a second dish (this was mostly some soufflé or a little piece of sausage). When we returned from work, we immediately set about cooking a meal.
I enjoyed eating potatoes, which I had not seen for more than nine years. There was the possibility to purchase them from an old Lithuanian woman, who had already been living in the „middle“ section for a couple of years.
On Sundays the storekeeper came over from the main section by sledge. Then we were able to buy bread, grease, pearl barley, vegetable oil and sometimes even „pilimeni“ (Siberian meat dumplings; translator’s note). The worst trial for us was loneliness. In the camp the Poles had always kept together, but in this place I was all alone. On my way to work I used to repeat poems again and again, which I still remembered from former times. They were extracts from „Pan Tadeusz“, „God, I am so sad“, „Ode to the youth“, „The Damned“ by Uyeyskiy and many others. Apart from that I knew „The Mass“ by Grashina Lipinskaya by heart, which she had written in Minsk in 1941after her first arrest, while serving her sentence. She had sent us this „Mass“ to Chuksha, when she worked in the mica mine in Bratsk.
„A Sunday morning in May ...
Listen, sisters – be quiet ...
Listen to the sound that spreads
Over the sky-blue rivers,
Over the Visla, Warthe, Nerman, Viliya, Bug,
From far away the sound gets into our hearts ...“
Letters to Poland I sent via Lvov, through Sophia Lekhovich. My relatives knew that I was alive an where I were. After having spent three months in the „middle“ section I learned that 19 kilometers away, in the taiga, in Okunovo, on the right banks of the Yenissey, there was a „machinery station“ with a whole group of Poles – among them Galina Lemberg and her mother, who I both were acquainted with. With Galina I had executed gang labour in the Taishet camps.
I asked one of the Lithuanian tractorists to take me to Okunovo. In fact, I found a large group of Poles there: Mistress Lemberg and her daughter Galina, who was married to Zdzislav Vlad from Lvov, Kazimezh Slobodzyanek from Lvov and Kazimezh Kharasimovich from Baranovichy, Yan Kovalevskiy from the Oshmyany region, Boleslav Maksimovich from Grodno, the doctor of jurisprudence Yozef Lustgarten from Krakov and a couple of Ukrainians (both men and women) from our home territories, including Prokop Matveychuk from Lublin; he worked with my sister and her husband Konrad Volosyuk at the post-office.
The Lithuanian told me that the Poles would usually meet in
Kazimezh Slobodzyanek’s little house, which he had built himself on the banks of the little river Syryanka, a
confluent of the Yenissey. Closely wrapped in a woolen shawl, I entered the heated kitchen in wadded trousers and a pea-jacket. Our eyes
met and filled with warms. A whole stream of warmth pervaded me, the first signs of a deep affection. From there I went to Vlad; he and
Galina lived in the little wooden hut next-door.
How pleaseant it was to hear one’s own mother tongue! Mister Matveychuk also came there, and so we jointly got back under Slobodzyanek’s warm roof and friendly care. Food and drinks immediately appeared on the table (he always knew how to produce as if by magic
everything needed) – and even a „chekushka“ (a quater-liter bottle of vodka; translator’s note). The conversation went on and on – there was no end in sight.
Finally Kazik asked, whether I would not like to move to Okunovo. Of course, I did. That was just what I desired. A few days later, discussing this matter over a bottle, Kazik, the work superintendant Babin from the timber industry enterprise and the head of the machinery station Novikov came to an agreement, and only one week later he came to pick me up by rack waggon. Just now of all times I had hung my washings our to dry. I quickly threw all wet and already dried clothes into a plywood suitcase (which they had made for me earlier in the camp). It was a clear moonlit night: we set out – twenty kilometers through the snow-covered taiga.
The story did not end without adventures. First of all we drove directly into a deep, big pit, which was filled with snow several meters high. We had to unharness the horse, pull it out first and then the cart, as well. We had hardly managed to get out of this unpleasant situation – another pit. Kazik slipped from the horse and disappeared in a snowdrift - just one leg remained visible, stucking out of the snow.
With great difficulty he managed to free himself. And I was entirely unable to do anything at all – I was shaken with laughter. Towards the end of our trip we lost our way, and when we finally reached Okunovo, it was already getting light.
I settled in the womens’ barrack and was assigned to to the task of repairing the paths particularly used by tractors. Together with Olga Lvova and Lyuba Denisova (I had become acquainted with both in the Taishet transit camp) I put poles on the ground and built narrow bridges across the brooks. On such paths they used to transport away „balany“ (pine-wood beams cleared of the branches; translator’s note) from the taiga.
After work Kazik came along with his friend Kharasimovich. This friend of his, when going to work with me, convinced me of better allaying all doubts and spend my live with Kazik, since it was not worthwhile to wait until we would be able to return to our homeland.
Not only once we met Poles, who had already been living in Siberia for a long time: Khodkevich, Strotskiy, Kukharskiy, Lyobavskiy, Kosinsky, Krasovskiy and others. Most of them were the descendants of rebels. They were hardly able to remember their mother tongue. I talked to one of them on the bazar. He said: „My grandfather and my parents believed that they would one day return to their homeland. But things did not turn out the way they had expected. They had to organize their lives here, in Siberia. But I do remember, how my grandfather used to sing Polish songs and danced a mazurka“. He was unable to hold back his tears. I sharply replied that we would go back to Poland. He shook his head and said: „Please God, may everything turn out all right“.
A couple of words yet about Kazik. He was born in Lvov in 1911; his father was a railroader. He was the eldest son of 11 children in all and helped his mother to bring up his little brothers and sisters. Therefore he new very well, how to organize one’s life. In his childhood it turned out that he had a talent for musics, but his father was not to be dissuaded that the children of nightingales should grow up like nightingales, but the children of sparrows, however, - like sparrows. He had a wonderful voice, but his father would not allow him to attend the choir singing lessons, where they had predicted Kazik the career of a singer. His father only emphasized: „This is no profession, for sure!“
Kazik dreamed of playing the violin. His mother was once able to induce the father to go with Kazik to a music store, in order to buy him the promised musical instrument, but having arrived there, the father suddenly refused to go in: in his opinion a violin was too expensive – there was no money for such things. But there was always enough money to sit and drink vodka in merry company. Having left the place, Kazik lost conscience of infinite disappointment.
Having finished the regular school education he went to a vocational school and besides worked in an arms factory. Afterwards he completed training courses at the Svark institute in Kattowitz and worked as an instructor for the railroad company in Lvov, where he earned good wages. He got married at the insistence of his father, because of a love affair that had gone too far. But his family life did not according to plan and was not harmonious at all. Without saying a single word to his wife or parents Kazik left for Lvov. The drab monotony of the daily round had been incompatible with his strong nature.
He set out to discover the world and joined the Foreign Legion. There he became famous for his braveness. Once, their military base was besieged by Arabs and they had to call the neighbouring bases for help; it was a long way to get there – through dozens of kilometers of uninhabited and deserted territory.
In the 1930s there was no possibility of getting in touch with people in the Sahara by radio contact. Someone had to break through the enemy encirclement under cover of darkness. They called for Kazik to come. He crept towards the Arab unit transport and swang himself onto a mare. The mare began to neigh, for she had scented the unknown rider, and the Arabs hunted them. Kazik speeded along through the wilderness and warded off the Arabs by shooting and throwing hand-grenades. At the end of his tether he barely succeeded to get back to his people, called for military support and immediately, without taking a rest, returned to his base in the company of soldiers. The reinforcements had almost arrived too late: one Arab after the other, all armed with daggers and guns, were already climbing up the walls of the fortification.
He did not write letters to anybody in Lvov. Nevertheless his father succeeded to find him. Shortly before the war he left the League and returned to Lvov, where he and his father squandered away all the money he had earned during the fights.
The year 1939. The beginning of the war. Kazik took part in the battles on the river Bzura. He was taken prisoner of war, but was able to escape. He returned to Lvov, where he started to work for the railroad company again and became an active member of the Armiya Krayova (the Polish anti-Communist Army which fought the Nazis; translator’s note), where he participated in acts of sabotage against the occupants.
They arrested him in 1944. During the period of remand he had to suffer a lot. For the rest of his life he had serious problems with the rectum, for they had beaten him up and crippled him by means of a bottle. Kazik was sentenced to 5 years. At first he served his term in one of the coal mines in the Donbass, where he and some other prisoners were once buried for more than 24 hours – after the caving in of an adit. Fortunately, the adit levels in the Donbass region were not situated very deep under the earth’s surface, so that a rescue party succeeded to dig them out. Kazik was then sent to the north by a prisoner transport. He was recognized as so-called „goner“ and received medical treatment in the Kotlas camp hospital for a long time. Having regained his strength, he happened to get to Vorkuta and started to work as a welder in a mechanical workshop.
He knew how to describe his adventures in a very pictorial manner. Immediately after his arrival in Vorkuta they put him into a barracks mainly occupied by „blatnye“ (individuals belonging to the hardened criminal world; translator’s note). Most of them were recidivists.
Having put the bundle with his belongings on one of the bed boards, he visited the other barracks to find out, whether there were any Poles. When he came back – he did not find his bundle anymore. He asked the orderly where they had got to. And that lad, who was also from among the criminals, replied: „What do I care, you son of a bitch?! You surely don’t suppose that I keep watch over your useless stuff!?“ And then Kazik began to search himself. He approached one of the plank beds, which looked by far better and much more proper than the others and lifted the matress to see, whether his belongings lay underneath. It was the plank bed of the pack of thieves’ boss. One of the criminals dealt him a heavy blow. „What are you searching for, you bloody Pole?“ The thieves’ ruler pushed him back. But Kazik, a Lvov street child, did not lose his head. He bumped his head into the ruler’s belly to such an extent that this lad found himself lying on his plank bed at the very same moment. The whole group of criminals now pounced on Kazik and screamed: „Beg for mercy, you scoundrel, your last hour has come!“ And these words were followed by another series of swearwords. Kazik reacted in Polish in the same way. And then one of the criminals from Minsk shouted: „Stop – it’s our own folk!“ And the thieves’ ruler, who had paid a „flying visit“ to Lvov, began to question Kazik about the criminal underworld in Lvov. Kazik had already heard of those bandits and named them, as if they were good friends of his. From that time on the thieves showed respect for him and one time even invited him to a „banquet“, where he was offered a big variety of delicacies: bacon, garlic and even alcohol from a teapot.It was a mystery to Kazik, how they had provided themselves with all these things.
At that time he started working for a mechanical workshop: he was transferred to another barracks, where he made new friends. He had quite a good life there, on emight even say a splendid life – compared to common camp life, particularly sinced it had occurred to him to deal with the production of dental prothesis.His career as a „dentist“ is an entirely separate chapte rin the book of his life, utterly colourful and exciting. He was busily handling the coarsest tools, extracted and filled teeth, adjusted bridges and crowns. As work material he utilized the metal plates of imported work benches, mainly made in Germany. Apart from this he made so-called „fixes“ (kind of crowns; translator’s note) for the NKVD guards – since those liked to show their golden teeth when laughing (of course, these crowns were not made of real „gold“). They used to pay for this service in kind: bread, sugar, tinned stewed meat or makhorka (an inferior kind of tobacco; translator’s note). His tools consisted of a chisel, flat-nosed pliers and another pliers, with which Kazik would tear out teeth. He used iodine for disinfection. Impressions were made of stearin or common clay. At times when there were no factory-made crowns available, Kazik produced them himself – from little stainless steel plates which he found on engines and work-benches, plates indicating the name of the manufacturing firm and the country of origin of the goods. He also made bridges himself. „He was a remarkable dentist!“
After he had served his sentence, they sent him from Vorkuta to the Krasnoyarsk region, where he was forced to settle for life. There he also worked as a welder: at first in Okunevo and later for the machine factory in Yenisseysk., where he built a water canon boat, which had been contsructed by local engineers. One of the designing engineers of this cutter, Colonel Y.A. Miller, lived opposite us, on Union Street.
Late in April 1953 I made myself home together with Kazik, starting
to live with him under one roof. With bread and salt, as you greet the newly-weds, we were welcomed by Yanek Kovalevskiy. And this was,
how our happy life began, if one could call it such, after
all, when considering the fact that one had to stay in this place by force – against
one’s own will. Kazik became utterly nervous when he learned that he was the first man in my life. Having suffered want and hunger for a
couple of years, he was not really convinced of his virility.
In my life there had been a couple of deep and serious flames and lots of likings, but all this had merely been based on platonic love. I had been brought up in this spirit and maybe this was also a matter of my moderate temperament. The men who had gone through the camps generally did not have a high opinion of women. In fact, these women were quite different; mainly the Russian and Ukrainian women from the so-called Great Ukraine were used to practising free love, but we, the Poles, behaved very honourably. Maybe there were exceptions from time to time, but this, without any doubt, very rarely happened.
In Okunovo, in the middle of the taiga, we lived for a whole year. Our little house stood in a wonderful place, on the banks of the river Syrianka, a tributary of the Yenissey. The little river had a very quick current; even in the middle of summer the water-surface was covered with ice, but during the winter (strange to say) there sometimes was no ice at all, even when it was extremely cold. On all sides the expanse of the taiga. The surroundings of Yenisseysk are not very rich in species of trees. The following coniferous trees are growing there: pinetrees, firs, Swiss stonepines and larches – and in deciduous trees: birches, asps, alders and birch-cherry trees, from the berries of which the Siberians used to make delicious cakes.
Nature in the taiga is a very wild one; it is very difficult to move forward and one easily gets lost. Most of the trees grow in a chaotic disorder. Young trees, bushes, high kinds of grass- they all form a thick undergrowth. The taiga zone differs from characteristic landscapes by its richness in water – creeks, swamps and lakes, which are permanently covered by grass and in the course of time also change into swampland.
To a certain degree the taiga was a kind of nurse to us. In the summertime I used to gather blueberries- with some very particular tool: Kazik had constructed something similar to a dustpan with a comb fixed to it. When going into the woods one always had to wear slacks, a long jacket with long sleeves and a mosquito hat, even when it was extremely hot. Worst of all in the taiga are the midges, horse-flies and mosquitos. One should, under no circumstance, try to walk through the woods without such a special hat. When a few hundred meters away the engines of tractors were roaring, the noise was still drowned out by all the buzzing insects.
I also gathered red currants (the local women call them sour berries), red whortleberries and cranberries. There is a variety of mushrooms in the taiga, too - in plenty, mainly edible boletes, which quickly reach the size of a saucer. I almost never met any little ones (it's true that we never looked for such). But the mushrooms there have a completely different smell from ours. By the way, there is a saying in Siberia: "Flowers without scent, women without love, but 100 versts (1 verst = 3500 feet = 1,06 km; translator's note) are no distance". In fact, there are plenty of flowers - and they are big. Woodland peonies, irises and orchids, little water lilies, which subsist on insects that have fallen into their calyxes - all this creates a strange and even slightly weird impression. Reconsidering the mushrooms again: flat mushrooms, butter-mushrooms (boletes) and orange-cap boletes are not gathered by the people living here. They prefer mushrooms with gills: lactarius (coral milky caps, green caps) and lacteous agarics. They soak them in water for about 24 hours and then salt them down in wooden tubs. Kazik and I, however, dried and marinated them. In fact, a marinade from wood vinegar does not turn out very well. For that reason I mainly dried the mushrooms.
There are many wet places in the taiga - where cranberries are growing. When I lonely roamed around looking for berries and mushrooms, I not only once notices the eerie but enchanting smell of the taiga. The dried up trees gently creaking from time to time on the waste plot of land, the branches and twigs occupied by wood grouses and black grouses, made me feel uneasy. Not once I hit upon a bear. I merely saw a couple of bear whelps, which had already been caught by hunters. But in the taiga I only noticed squirrels and some similar-looking ground squirrels.
Something else about the Siberian hunters. In Okunovo there lived an unattractive and shabby little old man, not taller than 150 cm and almost constantly drunk. He had a very peculiar and piercing glance. He was in possession of two dogs and had a wife, who was also permanently drunk. He was an excellent hunter. About fifty killed bears were his doing, and the same number of elks. He often sold meat - surreptitiously, of course, without the knowledge of the authorities. We used to buy elk meat, but the meat of bears - never! Once Kazik had dropped in on the old man to buy meat and was almost betrified with fear: a naked, dead woman was lying on the floor, and the place was all bloodstained. When Kazik asked about what had happened, the hunter burst into laughter and said that the dead body was nothing else but a skinned she-bear. Nevertheless Kazik then refused to buy any meat or fat, although bear fat is attributed a certain therapeutic effect. At least Machko from Bogdanets believed in this.
However, Kazik had the opportunity to meet with a bear in the taiga. He always carried out work for the commandant in Okunovo (now he built a sledge for his children, now he had to solder broken cooking pots or fulfill any other tasks), and that is why he was "in good terms" with the commandant (which was even more than mere protection). In Russia there is a saying that "relations are even more important than the People's Commissariat". Well, one day Kazik asked the commandant for his shotgun and went hunting wood grouses with one of his friends. In the depths of the taiga they found a little lake and decided to drink some water. Meanwhile they placed the double-barrelled gun under a tree. When they bent down to the water, they suddenly noticed the reflection of a bear creeping through the bushes and taking one's fill of raspberries. At the sight of the bear they completely forgot about the shotgun and ran away as fast as they could. But they had to return the gun, of course. The following day Kazik returned to the place, accompanied by the commandant. The gun was still lying there, but the rifle stock was entirely crooked; it had become useless.
In the taiga, not far from the river, we started planting cabbage and potatoes on a cleared piece of land. The ground was very fertile. It was entirely sufficient to plant the germs of potatoes, in order to bring in a rich harvest in autumn. And we were also keeping a pig and a couple of chickens. Thus, we did not have to fear hunger. Later we slaughtered the pig, made sausages and ham from it, and Kazik smoke-dried everything in his self-built smokehouse. I decided to send my friends from the camp a sample: Angela Rybarchik and Bazya Dumnitskaya. I added a pair of felt boots to Angela's parcel, which I had bought on a chance purchase: she worked in the country-side as a postwoman and urgently needed boots for the winter. Unfortunately, the only post-office was in Yenisseysk, 19 km away from Okunovo. Nina Ballakovo, a Belorussian from Baranovichi agreed to accompany me. On the path through the woods our sleigh now got stuck in the deep snow, now turned over. We finally left it behind by the way-side and carried the parcel on by hand, whereby we perpetually sank into snowdrifts. But the worst thing was yet to come: the crossing of the river. Along the riverbank (on our side) the river was covered with ice, while the opposite bank was flooded - and there was no sheet of ice at all. We could move neither forward nor backword; besides big snowflakes were falling.
We moved along the riverbank and accidentally noticed a big pile of lumber. We began to throw the wooden beams down the embankment into the water and then tried to cross the river once again through all the slush and the water holes. Our felt boots became completely wet and were soon covere with an ice surface. After having mailed the parcels, we entered a shop and bought some pieces of red cloth (they only sold cloth for sewing flags). With these remnants we bandaged our feet, thus using tham as foot-bindings.
At dusk we set out for home. Towards evening frost set in and the crossing of the Yenissey was much easier, the more since we did not have to carry the parcels anymore. Nevertheless, our way back home was not easy either, but in return for it the taiga looked very romantic in the starlit night.
We always celebrated festive days in grand style. All our Polish
friends and acquaintances would meet at our place on such occasions: Galina and Zdzislav Vlad, Galina's mother - pani (Polish: Mistress; translator's note) Lemberg from
Vilno, Yanek Kovalevski, Bolek Maksimovich, Doctor Lustgarten (from Krakau), Matveychuk (Ukrainian from Lublin), the Lett
, Julian Dovgyallo ( a Pole on his mother's side; he
spoke Polish fluently) and Konstanti Yukhnitski, an interesting and mysterious personality. He did not have the intention to return to
the "red" Poland. After his amnesty he went away to Alma-Ata, to one of the Poles known to him, who was married to a Russian woman.
A Czech, engineer Bruner, would also come to our home on festive days. He was a pilot. When the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia, he and his regimental comrades flew to the CSSR to avoid having to give up his plane to the Germans, but immediately upon their arrival they were all arrested and convicted of espionage. After having served his sentence, Bruner started to work in Okunovo as a chied engineer. There he married an exiled Polish woman.
In the spring of the year 1954, shortly before I was delivered of our first child, I placed myself under medical treatment at the maternity hospital in Yenisseysk. They had sent me there a little earlier, so that I would arrive before the break-up of the ice; but when the ice started drifting I had not yet reached Yenisseysk. In spite of my age (I was 40 years old at that time) I was quite inexperienced and did not have much luck, either. A couple of days before they had just dismissed a good doctor and gynaecologist: he was an exiled German, and his place had been taken by a Russian woman physician, a member of the Young Comunist League. She did not care a damn about the parturient women, the more since they were exiles. The gynaecological instruments had become rusty and lay about somewehere behind a closet. There was nobody available, who would have been able to carry out a Caesarian section or any other kind of operation. Everything was done by the hospital nurses. They were accustomed to act as midwives, when the string and healthy local women gave birth to their children, and this usually happened without any serious problems.
I had always been able to stand pain and for that reason did not lose conscience; I only cried myself hoarse. In terrible pain the delivery dragged out for a whole week. The child was born dead - it was suffocated.. For several hours they tried to press the fetus out of my womb. The boy was tall, weighed almost 4 kilograms. I had nearly been called to be with the Lord myself. I was rescued by Kazik's energy and motivation (for just these days he had been given work and a living space in Yenisseysk, and arrived here with all our belomgings), who rushed into the maternity hospital, complained and swore like thunder and lightning and menaced the woman doctor with legal acion should anything happen to me. Afterwards I still had to wear an oxygen mask and received penicillin injections for a few days, which were a rarity at those times. When I left the hospital I felt very weak, but Kazik succeeded in nursing me back to health again. We buried the child on the Yenisseysk cemetery. It had been our intention to call him Stas, in remebrance of Professor Stanislav Malkovski. Kazik put up a cross at the graveside and I planted flowers.Thus, another Polish grave was added - there were lots of them and many had already been existing for a long time. In the southern outskirts of Yenisseysk, surrounded by trees, there was a nice monument from black marble with the inscription "Maximilian Marx" and dates, which I do not remember, but they probably indicated the time after the January Rebellion. Most likely this monument was not destroyed because of the surname engraved on it ...
In Yenisseysk we took up our residenece in the Union Street, in a brandnew little house of Finnish style. We were the forth tenants in this house: one room, a kitchen - altogether 25 square meters. Galina and Zdzislav Vlad lived next-door to us. The second section was occupied by an elderly Tatar, who lived there together with her son, daughter-in-law and grandson. She was an exile, the widow of some Tatar bolshevik, who had lost his life in the camp. She showed us a watch with a name engraved on it. Her husband had once received it from Lenin. Those, who had arrested him, for some reason or other, had not paid any attention to it.
Later she sent a letter to Moscow applying for his rehabilitation. Under Malenkov there was a time when many exiles were rehabilitated and then returned to Moscow. I do remember a water-carrier, who watered a young bull named Kolya. Downtown there was only little water in the wells; apart from that it was very hard and entirely unsuitable for washing clothes. In order to get good water, we had to walk more than one kilometer to the banks of the Yenissey and fetch two buckets of water there, or we bought two or three bucketfuls from the water-carrier.
Well, this water-carrier had once been a general, the head of the Air Force Academy in Moscow. He had served his 15 years' sentence and had then been sent into internal exile here. He told us that he considered the time when he supplied people with water one of the happiest in his life, and that the young bull had been the most loyal and reliable friend he ever had. After his rehabilitation he admitted that he was not convinced of being able to get accustomed to a life in Moscow again.
Opposite our house there lived an engineer and colonel called Miller. His wife and son had left Moscow and followed him to the place of exile on their own will. He had also served a 15 years' sentence in one of the special camps, where he worked as a designing engineer. He had finished the Polytechnic Institute in Petersburg before the revolution.
Before becoming our neighbours the Millers had lived with an interesting old woman. She was entirely blind and convinced that God had inflicted this penalty on her - because she had once scratched out an icon's eye, when they destroyed the church in Yenisseysk. It seems that, before the revolution, Yenisseysk had been a regional town with 4 or 5 churches, but when we lived there only one was still being used. Another one served as a locksmith’s shop, in the third one they stored kerosine, the remaining two became ruins. The one where they still held divine services at that time was mainly attended by exiled Ukrainians and Poles. During the time when we were living there, they buried the bishop of Volhynia within the church enclosure. Ukrainians then came over to our house and asked Kazik to help them with the preparations for the burial.
In Yenisseysk, on the central square, just in front of the Party District Committee, there stood a tall statue of Stalin, who had been exiled to Yenisseysk in the Czar’s times. And after the overthrow of Beriya, Stalin’s successor, his family had also been exiled to Yenisseysk, but they did not suffer any hardship there.
Let me continue to talk about our apartment: it was light and very comfortable. In the summertime we plastered the walls and below the house, which had been erected on piles, Kazik built a suitable basement, where we used to keep chickens and turkeys during the warm season and rabbits and potatoes during the winter. During the cold season the poultry lived with us in the kitchen. Every day we had to clear the dung out of the roost by means of sawdust, which I brought home from the timber mill. The hens lay quite a lot of eggs – and eggs meant something very valuable in Sibiria. We were also keeping a piglet named Borka. As far as the rabbits were concerned, we almost gave their entire meat to our neighbour Abakumov – because he was the one, who slaughtered them (Kazik was unable to kill the small domestic animals we had brought up ourselves). This Abakumov, a second lieutenant, had once raised a dog himself and later killed it, in order to cure people from consumption by means of its tallow. The rabbit skins I give away to the „fur station“ (where I had seen thousands of sable skins before). In return for the rabbit skins they handed out food coupons, with which we could buy sugar and flour.
Those who did not dispose of such coupons received 2 kgs of flour twice a year: for the 1st of May and for the „October festivities“ (but only working people were entitled to this advantage). One could purchase sugar in the shop (1 kg per person), where one had to stand in line till one dropped. And if one intended to buy bread, one also had to wait in line for more than an hour. Bread was reached out in loaves of 2 kgs each. Once there was such a throng in the shop that the buttons of my jacket somehow opened. I noticed that and – below I did not wear anything else but an undershirt! Under great efforts I succeeded to tear the ends of the jacket free from the pushing and jsotling crowd.
And I remember another incident – when some old auntie came running over to our house shouting: „Kazimir Kazimirovich, hurry up! Quickly run over to the shop and rescue your wife, otherwise she will die from suffocation!“ Kazik came, broke through the shouting and pushing crowd of people and placed himself beside me.
Light, almost white honey, one could buy quite often and even at a much lower price than sugar; it was genuine honey for certain.
In the summertime, when we intended to gather berries, we had to cross the Yenissey by boat.
The embankment and the shallow waters were full of trunks, which had been prepared for being floated downstream to Dudinka. For that reason our boat was unable to make fast to the embankment and we were forced to jump over the trunks, trying hard to keep our balance, in order not to fall into the water. But that was not as bad as all that, when one only had to carry empty baskets. On the way back, however, all loaded with heavy, full baskets, one had to show a true wonderwork of dexterty and skill to jump over the trunks that were floating away under one’s feet. In Okunovo I had set off into the taiga in the company of Kazik, but when I returned from Yenisseysk, I usually had to get to the opposite riverbank myself. Kazik would only come there in the evening to help me carry all the berries or mushrooms home. These gifts from nature represented an important part of our food ration.
During our residence in Yenisseysk we often welcomed fellow countrymen at home. All, who had come to the town for macking purchases of food or taking care of some other business, stopped over in our place.
In October 1954 we accompanied a teacher from Baranovichi (as far as I remember, his name was Lobylinski) and his wife to the train for Maklakovo. On the way we chattered away quite aloud. An old man approached and told us that he was a Pole, too. We invited him to our home. It turned out that he was Mikolay Schiller, an engineer from Dogubych. Before the war he had been the director of the affiliate of the Nobelevsk mineral oil company. He was arrested in 1939, when he tried to desert to Romania. After the signing of the pact between Sikorskiy and Stalin, Schiller became one of the organizers of our army, which was evacuated from the USSR. When he already seemed to be standing with one leg on the east front, they arrested him again – as well as many other organizers – and inflicted a new penalty on him. After his release from the special camp he worked for a geological griup in North-Yenisseysk. He told us, in which way the geologists had transferred their geological research station further upstream: human beings were put to the boats, which they then had to pull forward against the current. Having realized this project, he had great difficulties to find himself a place to live, and there finally was no other way left but taking shelter on a Tatar’s loft. When Kazik learned about this drafty loft, he invited Pan Schiller to go with him and accomodated him in our kitchen.
In the winter of the year 1955 my cousin, Marianna Kshechkovska (Izabella Yasinska- Stankevichova) came over to us from the camp. We had become friends with her while serving our sentences in the Taishet camps. Soonafter, both Marianna and Mikolai, got jobs in Maklakovo. She found employment as a hospital nurse for the House of Invalids, and he was taken on in the timber factory. However, he did not stay long in this place, but returned to Yenisseysk on his own will. Kazik found him a job as a watchman for the port authorities, where the steamships used to moor.
Yenisseysk was a seaport. Ships from the Arctic Ocean arrived there, coming from Dudinka, Igarka and Norilsk. Once, fishermen from Yenisseysk caught a whale, which had got into the river Yenissey by error.
The Yenissey is one of the largest Siberian rivers. In the Tungusian language its name stands for „big waters“. The river forces its course through enormous rapids. From Yenisseysk, by means of the current, the river is even navigable to big ocean liners. During the summer the Yenissey may reach a width of up to 2 km. In the spring it often flows along in a width of up to 5 kms, and before it empties into the sea even up to 60 kms. One of the biggest confluents of the Yenissey is the Angara, also called Upper Tunguska, a mighty river abounding in water. It has its source in Lake Baikal, but it is said that its true source is in the Selenga river, which rises in Mongolia. The Angara differs from other rivers by its unusually rapid current. And that is why just on this river, in Bratsk, convists built a gigantic hydroelectric power plant. Bratsk is situated on the river Angara, northeast of Taishet, some tenth of kilometers away from the station of Chuksha, where I worked as a laboratory assistant for the camp hospital.
Once, in the spring of 1955, Pan Schiller told us a
piece of news – that a big transport of exiles had arrived in North-Yenisseysk, among them many Poles.
Kazik and I took a couple of sausages, bacon (standing Easter we had slaughtered the pig), bread, and then we
set off to meet them. Pan Schiller and I became aware of a young lad, Cheslav Pavlovski (Malinovski), who
, had lost one of his arms during the partisan fights not far fromVilensk. He was very fond of Pani Marysya
(I do not remember her family name) from Zheludok near Vilensk. Pan Mikolay and Kazik decided to
persuade the commandant to allow both of them to stay in Yenisseysk. After
long negotiations they paid about 2000 Rubels (for the transport) and finally
left by train. At first they also took up quarters with us. We always permitted
our guests to sleep on the big, splendid bearskin. Later Kazik helped Pan
Cheslav to find a job in the timber factory, where he and Marysya then rented a
room of their own.
On the 26th of April 1955 our son Tadeusz was born. The delivery turned out to ne difficult again, but this time I was already experienced, and so the story ended happily. Kazik bought a baby carriage for about 550 Rubels and built a nice children’s bed. Sophia Lekhovich, my friend Zosya’s (Stefaniya Lekhovich-Vishnovskaya’s) mother, who I had taught lessons and later placed with the laboratory in Chucksha, sent us from Lvov all the layette for the little one.
Tadik prospered well. Marianna gave him a little cross that someone in the camp had made of a ring. I sent it to Lvov to have it consecrated. Tadik did not grow ill, but he was rather boisterous. I feared that he might not get enough milk, because I only feeded him from one breast. Tadik had problems with the other one, as he could not get hold of its nipple. Ever since he was a child, he did not like to take much trouble when he wanted to have something. He also would not accept a pacifier. One of the first sounds he entirely unwittingly articulated was „A-Ka“. This made Pan Mikolay laugh: „And now you try to explain that you are no Armiya Krayova soldiers.
In the morning Kazik went to work and I left to line up for
bread and other foodstuffs, which were just available. It was a good thing that Pan Mikolay worked as a
watchman at night: thus, he was able to take care of Tadik during the day. He often took him out in his baby
carriage or tried to rock him to sleep by reciting „Pan Tadeush“ by heart, which he had almost in mind in its
full length. Tadik lay there without moving and listened ). devoutly, but he did not fall asleep. Pan Mikolay was
was very astonished: „I am almost going to fall asleep myself, and the little one does not show any signs
of tiredness!“ The hot summer of the year 1955 came to an end, the autumn drew near. We dug out potatoes and made
preparations for the winter. Kazik got ready to buy a cow; he had already paid the first installment and transported hay to the spot. November was coming. Pan Schiller went to work; however, he returned soonafter and announce: „We are going back to Poland!“ Whereupon Kazik said: „It seems you are in the mood for joking again!“ But Pan Mikolay replied in the typical Lvov style: „Damn God – that’s the whole truth!“ The next morning Kazik hastened to the commandant, who confirmed that everything was true and correct.
We hastily started to get prepared for our departure. In the factory Kazik numbered amongthe higly esteemed workers; there they did not agree at all to let him leave. He had to direct himself to the commandant, who entered a formal objection to the public prosecutors, and only then Kazik received his discharge papers. We began to sell our furniture (which Kazik had mainly made himself), the chickens, the hay and tableware and other objects. A couple of chickens, turkey-hens, personal clothes, the bearskin (it’s a pity that we did not take it along to Poland!) and other things we left with the Vlads, who later sold a part of it and sent the money to Lvov, to Pani Lekhovich, who had helped us so much. Some of the turkey-hens we roasted en route.
Due to the permanently open doors (we were continuously called on by interested takers, and in November it is already very cold in Siberia). Tadik caught a cold. His temperature was rising. But we decided not to postpone our departure. Firstly, nobody knew, whether there would be a second transport; secondly, one could not be safe from anything at all in this country. One had to strike the iron while it was hot. The commandant had ordered a truck for us, which was supposed to take us to Maklakovo, where lots of Poles had already gathered. At the same time he asked us to exchange his government loans. In the USSR everybody was forced to „voluntarily“ bind oneself to such bonds (not less than 1% of the salary); they took the money and emitted obligations which allegedly yielded a profit. The documents were completely valueless, but it was not permitted to take them out of the country. They exchanged these obligations against ready money, and Kazik received 3000 Rubels – our funds for the future. The commandant made use of the opportunity to also redeem his government bonds. Kazik converted them into cash together with ours.
We felt very uneasy about whether or not he would put the promised truck to our disposal in actual fact. He kept his word and came to say good-bye with a bottle of champagne in his hands. He expressed his regret for our departure and said: „Why do you leave this place? You surely know that Poland is red, too!“ And Kazik replied: „Even if it were black“ But it is still Poland!“ And then, finally, the long-desired truck arrived. We loaded our belongings and, although snow was lying on the baby carriage in which Tadik was sleeping, we were happy to leave now – finally, we alone, without escort! Only poor Burek was running after us for a long, long time, piteously barking ... But in the end he ran back home. Vlad and Galina took charge of him. However, a tragic end was waiting for him – he was killed by ruffians.
I sewed Tadik a sleeping-bag from fur to protect him from the frost. But he breathed too much cold air, and his temperature was rising again. The truck took us up to Maklakovo, the collecting point. There everybody had to change to a cold bus, which transported us 600 km away to Krasnoyarsk. I feeded Tadik with tea and steeped spice-cakes I had warmed up on my breast (two weeks before our departure I had weaned the child). During the trip he started suffering from diarrhoea. At the station in Krasnoyarsk we got into a heated waggon, and it seemed to us, as if we had come to paradise on earth. It was a common express train, the waggons of which had been built in the Tsegelsiki Works in Posen. Kazik discovered this fact when scraping off the Soviet inscription from the little metal plates, which had been painted over to hide the Polish letters underneath.
We stayed in Krasnoyarsk for a few days, until the train had been made up. I used the stopover to clean Tadik’s blanket, three of his four diapers and his rompers, and Kazik hung them out to dry in some kind of boiler house. Unfortunately, someone else obviously was in urgent need of them, too.
Due to the warmth and the warm meals Tadik started feeling better and recovered. I cooked kasha (dish of cooked grain or groats; translator’s note) for him by means of an „oil lamp“
(petroleum stove; translator’s note) and gave him highly liquid cabbage soup from the portions we received during the trip. I have to admit that we were provided with meals quite well, compared to the food supplied to us on our way to Ostashkov or Taishet. During the trip Tadik completed the first six months of his life and his first teeth came through. But he was very cheerful, jumped about on his little legs and seemed to be looking forward with us to our return from unfreedom. Marianna, Pan Mikolay and Yan Stankevich, Marianna’s future husband, took care of him, as well. Kazik had a lot of things to do: he became the commandant of the waggon. The food supplies were sufficient but delivered irregularly. It sometimes happened that we received breakfast, lunch and dinner all at the same time. They usually reached out lunch at the bigger railroad stations. Some even received new dresses or suits to make them look „correct“ when they entered Poland. They took us to Lvov via Moscow, but they did not give us the permission to leave the waggon in Lvov. With a heavy heart Kazik had to accept that he would not be able to see the beloved town.
We crossed the border in Medyka on the 1st of December. Some people got off the train to kiss their native soil. We were taken to the repatriation point in Novy Sonch, where each of us was handed over an amount of 1000 Zloty, as well as a repatriation passport with a photo. For that reason we had urgently had our pictures taken.
Early in the morning, accompanied by Marianna and Anelka Dzevulska, I ran over to the Polish Roman-Catholic church in tears to thank the Holy Maria that she had miraculously brought us back to our homeland.
(Translation from Polish into Russian: V. Birger, „Memorial“ Society, Krasnoyarsk, 03.01.1997)
1. Was born in Bialystok in 1914. Arrested („detained“) on the 01.11.1944 in Bialystok, where she edited the underground newspaper „Bialystok Courier“. With her brother Alexander and her sister Sophia she served her sentence in the Ostashkov camp (region of Tver), where she was arrested again on the 16.06.1945 and sentenced by an OSO of the Ministery of State Security on section 58-2 and 11 on the 27.03.1946. The sentence was 8 years. She was released from the OzerLag on the 05.01.1953 and from exile on the 14.11.1955. She returned to Bialystok. Rehabilitated on the 10.09.1997 by the Public Prosecutors of the region of Tver (file No. N 25822-C).
2. Was born in Lvov in 1911. Arrested in Lvov on the 11.01.1945. Sentenced by an OSO of the Ministery of State Security on section 54-1„a“ on the 18.12.1945. Sentence: 5 years. Released from the RechLag on the 11.01.1950. Released from exile on the 28.05.54 (since he was one of those, who had only been sentenced to a short term). In 1955 he went back to Bialystok together with his wife. Rehabilitated on the 13.03.1995 by the Public Prosecutor of the Lvov region.
3. Character from G. Senkevich’s novel „The cross bearer“.
5. Lieutenant-general A.I. Todorsky
A. Todorsky
Head of the Air Force Academy (Zhukov Academy) from 1934, head of the Administration of Military Academies from 1936.
7. Armiya Krayova is the part of the Polish army, which fought the Nazis (occupants) on their territory.