Rafaela Wróblewska

"When we arrived, there was snow, winter. Sometimes it is cold on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin on the 8th. And we were sent on the 6th. We lived in such small peasant cottages, dugouts, with no roof, simply a heap of earth. It was snowing, frost. There were cows, everything people kept, and people. We slept on the ground. I will tell you, it was great poverty, but thank God, we have endured it all. As my mum said: if we were to be in prison, it is prison for me here, too. There was not a single room, some chauffer built it, he was there a year or six months and we paid 180 roubles for it. A small place, perekhodchik and a cow was standing there. We used straw as a fuel, and when there was no straw, because the harvest wasn’t good. There was no well, there was a big lake, seven kilometres, and we went there to take water. In winter, we would break the ice and drink water. We would go to the lake and komish we carried straw and used it as a fuel. It was steppe. But they would not let us come closer to the woods. Nobody was allowed to come any closer, it was five kilometres, but nobody would come any closer. There were 20 people, and they brought us. There were the Iwanicka, the Baranowska, two families, the Szkwarski, three, the Żubrycki, four, the Lipski, Tarnowski, Piątkowski and we, eight. Poles and the local people, too, who were also sent, exiled like robbers to Kazakhstan."

"I used to clean filters and wetted my hands, it was crackling cold, my skin got frozen and then … it was war, there was no help, nothing to spread with. Living hands. And a sister, not a doctor, nurse, but a sister had to cut them off, do the surgery, because there was nothing. But I did not fell. To die, today or tomorrow, does not matter. With or without hands, to stand before God with an examination of conscience. It was difficult first, but I got used to it. First with my mum, then my mum died, and I was left alone.'