334 GOLGOTAthe shot, and saw his body a few minutes later. The same fate overtook prisoners for the
slightest breach of regulations, especially for moving even a few steps from the spot
where they were working, or for not keeping in line when they were marching.
Everybody was pitilessly robbed the moment they arrived and all the prisoners were
utterly demoralized...
As a result of the twelve- to fourteen-hour day, with no day of rest in the week, the
prisoners suffer from exhaustion after a very short period, and are easily attacked by dis-
ease. Yet a prisoner only gets sick leave when he has at least 40 degrees of fever, and then
only if the quota of sick leave for that day is not filled... Out of a camp of some 10,000
men, some 2,000 die every year... Every morning there are some prisoners who cannot
be roused, having died during the night. In the first two and a half months of my time at
Kolyma out of the total of twenty Poles in my group, sixteen died. Four, including myself,
survived.
In winter, one has to work even in -65°C of frost. Clothes get worn very quickly in the
mines. We went about wrapped in rags which we almost never took off... The prison-
ers' one dream is to get to hospital... Self-inflicted wounds were universal. A prisoner
willingly chopped off his finger in the hope of getting admitted. I myself, with another
Pole shortly before our release, decided to cut off our fingers and toes. We had come to
the end of our endurance.
At the end of some months I was transferred from Maldiak to Berliach, where I
worked as a welder in a motor-car dump. In this place for a whole three and a half
months we never saw bread. We lived entirely off herrings. My wages were thirty-two
roubles a month, and to earn this I was doing 100 per cent of the norm.
After the outbreak of war, the Poles were moved to the forests and used for felling
trees... While at this forest work, I learned entirely by chance about the Polish-Soviet
Pact and the 'amnesty' affecting all Polish prisoners. I saw the commandant to ask him
about this. By way of reply, I was severely punished, having to stand for twenty-four
hours in the open without food.
On 20 September 1941 we were moved back to Magadan. During the four-day jour-
ney we were not given any food. At Magadan I met some 1,200 Poles. From what they
said, I learned that 60 per cent of the Poles deported to the camps along the Kolyma had
died. Conditions at Magadan did not change much in practice after the amnesty. The
same regulations remained in force as before.^17
Many did not survive. By the time that the Amnesty was granted in 1941, (for
crimes that had not been committed), almost half of the one-and-a-half million
Poles deported in the previous years were already dead. The victims included
100,000 Polish Jews, headed by the Chief Rabbi of Warsaw, Moses Shore. The
exact numbers will never be known.
In relation to sufferings on this scale, the death or disappearance of c.25,000
Polish army officers might not cause much surprise. The officers had been taken
into Soviet detention in September 1939, separated from the rank and file, and
sent to three separate camps in western Russia. Most of them were not profes-
sional soldiers, but reserve officers mobilized during the German offensive.
They were well-trained graduates - teachers, civil servants, businessmen, doc-
tors, scientists. From the Soviet point of view, they were the cream of the class
enemy. For eight months, until May 1940, they were able to correspond with