Tag #106359 - Interview #91108 (Boleslaw Janowski)

When I went to register, I was detained, like everyone in that group, Jews and Poles. We were an unknown quantity, ‘beznadiozhny’ [Russian for ‘no-hopers’]; the Russian authorities didn’t trust us. They kept us locked up for a few days, and then we were herded onto a goods train under escort. Without any investigation they sent us to clear forest, to the Vologda district on the River Unzha, near a place called Manturovo [today Russia]. Vyetka 53, something like a settlement, was a labor camp where we were prisoners. We slept in barracks on straw mattresses, and during the day we cut down trees. Clearing forest is hard work. The work lasted from sunrise to sunset. There’s a vast pine forest there. We cut the trees down with axes and saws. There was a minimum of two people to a saw, maybe even four: two at each end, but the axe I had to wield myself. Then these specialists would throw the trees into the Unzha, where they bound the trunks together into rafts, ‘kletka’ in Russian.