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Our today’s interviewee:

Halina Rutecka, born in 1938 in Prużana (Pruzhany in today’s Belarus), was sent along with her mother and two older siblings to Siberia during the fourth deportation. They were deported by the Soviets on 21 of June 1941, one day before the German invasion on the Soviet Union. In Siberia, the NKVD men killed deported women and children in a sly and cruel way, but Halina and her family were rescued by one of the Russian NKVD officers. They ended up working in taiga forest, where each day was a struggle for survival. They were promised to be sent back to Poland in 1944, but were transported to Caucasia instead. Only after the war did they manage to return home.

Copyright by Instytut Solidarności i Męstwa im. Witolda Pileckiego.