Elżbieta Wrzosek

"The Soviets camps were just dreadful. One boy from the other camp used to visit me from time to time. He was very nice Ukrainian boy. I looked after him. When he was sixteen he left his home village, starving, to find a job in a town. He intended to earn some money and send it to his parents who stayed in the village but he didn’t manage to earn any. He borrowed the money and after two months somebody came and said: ‘Give the money back’. ‘I don’t have them’ – he answered. They told him: ‘We’ve got something to take care of, you come with us’, so he did. They were plundering the shop while he had to watch the place around if anbody came. The police caught them and he was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for the group robbery. I used to bring some things for him to the camp. After a few months, I found out my boy Dzima spiting something out. He avoided meeting me and seemed to be embarrassed. He became a wretched men. I don’ really know what happened to him, he stopped visiting me. In general those prisoners were very grateful people. It’s difficult to describe what special kind of people they were. Once I came to the camp in tears because my baby – Tereska was dying of an inflammation and I had no medicine to save her. The baby was dying and there were no medicine, no doctors, nobody, nothing! The prisoners asked: “Dear Elizawieta, what happened? What happened to you?’. “My baby is dying of an inflammation”- I answered. They asked: “Why didn’t you tell us?’. Russia in that time and even now is a kind of a strange country. It really is and I can’t understand it. Can you imagine this – in no longer than thirty minutes I had everything I needed – a bottle of spirit, the medicines that were impossible to buy – the penicillin, the streptomycin. It was forty-five years ago, those medicines were just not available. I got some fruits as well while we weren’t used to eating much fruit, as it was too difficult to buy them. All of a sudden I had full bag of fruits. They packed the whole bag up with the fruits, the spirit, the medicine and some other things. Only those people in the camp knew where it came from. Because I worked in the camp, I spent the time with the prisoners, I treated them well– Tereska stayed alive".

"It was 1945. The Polish school in Baranowicze was opened. We lived ten kilometers away in Stołowicze but I attended school in Baranowicze. I remember the 1st of May and I remember everybody speaking Polish. There were some old Polish teachers: Mrs. Chmielewska, Mrs. Zaręba, Mr. Dąbrowski. I can’t remember all of the names... There was a lady who we laughed at a lot – we called her silly Katiusza – she used to teach us Russian language. The headmaster Mr. Gutto taught History. The rest of the teachers we had were good and old Polish teachers. On the 1st of May we were told to meet and glorify the Bolsheviks. Nobody went. On the 3rd of May all of the teachers and the school children organised a huge manifestation. We brought the Polish flags and that kind of stuff… The local government closed the school on the 10th of May and we were banned signing up to any other school. That’s how it was. My family and I were from Stołowicze and we had to leave the village because of me. We moved to Mołczadzi with my aunt Zosia. Finally, I managed to complete the school unofficially, here".