- Siberia, Siberia – these are probably the most hated and terrifying words in the Polish language, says Bolesławiec resident EUGENIUSZ STACHOWSKI. – Like almost my entire generation from the Eastern Borderlands, I experienced the war years painfully. If I return to these memories today, I do so with the aim of documenting the history of my homeland, which is often treated selectively and opportunistically.
The war found him in JANÓWKA, 5 km from Tarnopol. His father was the commander of a police training post there. He was born in historic Zbaraż and attended the boys’ elementary school in Tarnopol (it was named after Lelewel and was located on Kazimierza Street). Just before the Russians entered, the scouts were preparing to defend themselves, armed with “finki” knives, but his father took him to his grandfather in Zarudzie. His grandfather ran a sizeable estate there. On a Sunday in September 1939, a huge Russian aircraft scattered leaflets signed by Timoshenko over the Polish side of the border. With one of them, he rode on horseback to the police post. Events now unfolded rapidly: Polish and Russian aircraft clashed in the sky, machine guns rattled, and enemy tanks were already charging across the fields. In the orchard, our soldiers, who had tried to defend themselves, were disarmed; the soldiers tore the little eagles bearing the inscription SP (elementary school) from their school caps. His father was arrested, but soon escaped captivity and took up trading.
A period of captivity, persecution and collaboration began. The farm foreman Dudak became the village headman (“hołowa”). On Christmas Eve, an NKVD representative arrived unexpectedly and took his father to the prison in Zbaraż. The sentence: 15 years of hard labor because he had been a policeman. He ended up in Asia. A few months of calm passed, followed by the memorable date of 13 April 1940. There was still snow on the ground. At night, soldiers and the NKVD arrived by sleigh. A pounding on the door, a brief order: “Get ready!” He was 12 years old. Deportations to Siberia were already underway. His mother managed to escape through the window and hide in the cellar. After a while she returned; she could not leave her son, grandfather and grandmother behind.
Short, blunt orders: “Everyone get dressed!” With trembling hands, they put on warm clothing, thick boots and warm outerwear. It was obvious—the road led to Siberia! They were hurried along: faster, faster! Dawn was breaking when they were loaded onto sleighs. They reached the Podwołoczyska railway station. Dozens of railway wagons stood there. The people present were checked—fortunately, the grandparents were not on the lists. Inside the wagons were makeshift bunks; the windows were boarded up. The transport set off in the evening. Old people, young people and children were crammed inside. Fear of the unknown. Hunger, the crying of the youngest children, the smell of unwashed bodies. Foreign stations—Tomsk, Omsk. Three weeks of traveling at night; during the day the trains stood still, sometimes in open country or in a forest. Hot water (“kipietok”) was rarely available; a mobile shop (“wagon-ławka”) also traveled with them.
At last, the destination station—Petukhovo, northern Kazakhstan. Families were distributed by truck among distant collective and state farms. They were assigned to meat-and-dairy farm No. 4 in Agażan. They shared a dugout—a pit excavated in the ground and covered with a roof—with another woman, the wife of a Polish officer, who was completely unprepared for the harsh conditions of life on the steppe. His mother milked cattle in the open, in the cold, scorching heat and rain. The daily quota was 14–16 cows to milk. In summer, her son worked “on the rake,” raking grass; later he was promoted to “utiotczyk,” an accountant; in autumn, the steppe had to be plowed with a 12-furrow plow. This required an iron constitution, while his health was being destroyed by dysentery and other illnesses. He entered the fifth grade of a Russian school. During the harvest, he hid wheat in small bags in the steppe, then searched for them at night and brought them to the dugout. The daily ration of 40 decagrams of bread was insufficient. This was the cultivation of virgin steppe; no warehouses were built, so the grain was piled on the ground and covered with straw, with a shallow ditch dug around it. Two years of tragic experiences and hunger. They trapped ground squirrels. Summers were short there, winters severe—with temperatures falling to 40 degrees below zero—and blizzards were frequent. Once, six Poles froze to death in the steppe in a sleigh: they did not reach the camp when an icy wind rose and visibility fell to just 2–3 meters. Only in spring were their black, swollen bodies found beneath the snow.