sion to return. The German commission left after several days of operation. In the meantime, the passportisation was coming to an end, but we had no passports. But in the USSR one must have a passport. A passport gave one the right [31] to live and work and to accommodation. Here and there one heard rumours about forced resettlement of refugees. The matter of refugees needed to be settled anyway. On 22 or 23 June 1940 there was a test air raid alert until further notice. That night, as always, I went to sleep with the lights out. I was woken at night by fearful crying and moaning coming from all directions: from the street, the neighbouring flats, including the room adjacent to mine which was occupied by a family from Kraków: a physician, his wife, and two little children. I heard screaming, begging… . It turned out that it was a deportation of refugees. NKVD functionaries, assisted by party members, went from one flat where the refugees were living to another, ordering the refugees to pack their possessions. They then escorted them to the railway station where they squeezed dozens of victims into sealed wagons, [32] of which there were a few hundred. The physician who was my neighbour had a heart attack when he heard that grievous news and was barely revived. It was only a doctor’s emphatic statement that the patient could die if he left his bed that saved him from exile. Unfortunately, I have recently received news from Lvov that the physician, his wife, and two little children (girls aged five and nine) were murdered in the Gestapo prison on Łąckiego Street. They had finally returned home to Kraków with a legal pass signed by the German mayor. The car they were travelling in was stopped on the way and all the passengers were arrested and then murdered even though they had legal passes.
The NKVD functionaries entered the room where my sister and I were sleeping and they ordered us to dress quickly. I was ready for anything. The civilian conducted a thorough inspection of my books (he even checked the publication year [33] of Lenin’s works) and then started looking for arms. At the same time he was very polite and he checked in the registration questionnaire he had with […] my sister and I had registered for staying and he asked for our student IDs. Instead of to the railway station the NKVD functionaries escorted us (on the way I learned from them that their entire detachment had been brought from as far as the vicinity of Kharkov) to the militia station, where, as a student, I was allowed to stay with my sister for a while, that is, until the end of the exam session. The matter of letting students stay in Lvov had not been definitely settled. The streets were a grim sight. All peasant
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