Tag #106546 - Interview #78221 (Daniel Bertram)

I was taken to yet another camp, Piatiy Uchastek. And we were there for another few months. We were driven there, because it was a different season. We were driven in lorries, but not petrol powered, but wood powered. Every few kilometers the driver would stop and throw the blocks of wood into this cylinder. And that's how we traveled. We didn't know where to until we came to Piatiy Uchastek, or 'the fifth section'. They were always chopping and changing the groups, a different team every verse end. Different people. A stranger among strangers, I was. I didn't know anyone. And work again. The conditions were harsher there. The best conditions were in Kanatna Droga.

There was this huge project: there were an awful lot of Russkies [derogatory term for Russians], who were building a hydroelectric power plant. We were reinforcing the sluicegate, all the time, near the Volga. And then one day, one night, 4th September 1941, we found out about the Sikorski amnesty. We didn't know about Majski then [the Sikorski-Majski Pact] [14]. The next day we were called out to the registration committee in alphabetical order. And they asked me where I wanted to go. Did I want to go to Kokand [Uzbekistan] or to Tashkent? I wanted to go to Astrakhan, because there was Russian industry there. But a friend from Cracow told me that the Cracovians were going to Georgia, and that I should go there too.