Lieutenant Colonel (ret.) Michal Javorčák

“So then the second day we went to work by ourselves. By the time we’d shovelled the snow from around the tree, by the time we’d prepared everything, what with being bent doubled, we were dizzy with hunger. When the tree fell down into the snow, we couldn’t even see it, the snow was soft as flour from the frost. Then we had to trod all around it, cut the branches off. We burnt the branches in winter, not in summer, so we wouldn’t set fire to the forest. We didn’t even saw that one tree up lengthwise and we were already going home, so we didn’t fulfil the quota, and they gave us less food. And because I was young and there were older and more experienced prisoners there, they made me into a cook. So I got 30 dkg, practically a handful, of groats or something like that, and also a metal bucket, but I didn’t have any matches. So I took a twig and a piece of string and made some sparks, then something dry that would catch fire, I got water out of the snow, and when it started boiling, I put the groats in, cooked them in that dirty water, there was no salt, and I hollerred: ‘Lunchtime!’”

“One lovely day, it was sometime in early 1940, we got ourselves ready, that we’d leave in the evening. And when I was leaving my home, I looked around, and Dad was only just coming home, he was somewhere on the village square, and we passed by each other on the doorstep. He asked me: ‘Where’re you going?’ I said: ‘Nowhere, I’m just going for a walk, I’ll be back.’ And he said: ‘I was there on the square, there’s nothing there, don’t go there.’ And I replied: ‘I’ll be right back.’ So I left, he went home, I reached the road and turned around to look at the house, and I thought to myself: I’m setting off into the unknown, who knows if I’ll ever see this house and my parents. The boys were already waiting for me on the village square, so we bought ourselves something for the road, some bread and cigarettes, and we set off over the hills. After a while we stopped and looked back, and one boy said: ‘I’m going back, my parents are ill, they’re old, they’d miss me a lot, I’m going back home.’ And I thought to myself that I’m in the same situation, that my parents are also old, my mother was ill. So he shook hands with us and went back home. So in the end there were only six of us boys who left.”

“In Novokhopersk they assigned me to the anti-air guns, those were about two-metre-long guns, heavy they were, they weighed 16.5 kilogrammes and had to be carried by two men. And when I then went for a medical check, they told me: ‘Look, this gun’s too heavy for you. We’ve received some anti-air Zenits [37 mm guns - trans.], they need calculations done and getting used to, so we’ll assign you to the anti-air cannons.’ They gave us a Russian manual, and we familiarised ourselves with them. The Russians showed us how to operate it, the cannon weighed 21 quintals, and it could theoretically fire up to 180 rounds per minute, and it had three types of ammunition, anti-tank, anti-air, and anti-infantry. So we trained, and I proved to be a clever person, so straight off they made me into cannon commander, commander of the crew, that was seven people. Most of my crew were women, but they were very capable. I used to set one of them as an example to the chaps: ‘Look at her, a woman, but she’s better than you are, she’s faster at dressing up, she’s faster at everything.’”

“Nothing much happened in the morning either, and then suddenly the door opened and my mother was standing there with the mothers of two of my friends. When they had found out that we hadn’t come home that evening, they set off with a mind to catch us up. And because there was snow everywhere, they followed our tracks. They crossed the borders like we did, and the Russians nabbed them just like they did us. And they told them they were looking for some boys, that their children had run away. The Russians retorted ‘nichevo’, bundled them up and brought them to us. Well, and I was completely dumbfounded. They started crying, it was awful, that they wanted to go home, that they should let us go. So I said: ‘Okay, we’ll make that request.’”

“We travelled the whole months, until we reached the terminus somewhere high up, I don’t know where it was. We got out of the wagons, we were all stiff and slow from the journey - you can imagine, sitting in a wagon for a month. So they gave us each a salted fish, ‘tyulka’ they called it, that was for food. There was an awful lot of snow, so we automatically started eating the snow to quench our thirst. And then we travelled on foot through the snow for several days. We were followed by a horse and sleigh, so that when someone dropped down or collapsed, they’d put him on it and take him along behind us; if someone died, they’d throw him in the snow and dig him down under - the wild animals would eat him up anyway. And then we came to one house, and we slept there, I sat down all tired, my legs were stiff as wood, one bloke sat on them. We continued in the morning, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t feel my legs at all. So two chaps helped me get up, and I thought to myself: ‘They mustn’t put me on that sleigh because I’ll freeze up there and they’ll throw me in the snow any way, and I’ll die.”