European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

If I had agreed to become Lithuanian then I would have worked longer,

but because I did not agree to do so, I was fired in October and came back to Orwidów,

then I took up working at the farmstead.

On the whole, it was a male job. There were no men. And I was the main worker then.

Those were very, very hard times.

In spring 1940 the Lithuanians asked, quote unquote,

to include this part of Wileńszczyzna into the Soviet Union as a further republic.

So the Soviet power came.

The Soviet power wanted to show off that they were better,

better for us than the Lithuanians were.

And the Soviet power came.

Somebody informed me that I can make money in forests as a cart man.

There were one, two horses.

As winter came, there was plenty of snow, so one of our workers drove one sleigh, I drove the next one.

During the whole winter I worked as a cart man.

When it was still dark outside we used to go to the forest by sleigh, load the timber, firewood.

We took it to the station called Bezdany, there we had to unload the firewood and come back to the forest.

We had to do this twice a day.

The next spring came in 1941.

In June 1941 I went to Vilnius.