Transportation and Life in Exile [Kazakhstan, Siberia]

"God willing, somehow we survived, 1934, 1935, to 1936. In 1936, it was around the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the 8th, but we were expelled on the 6th. They gave us three days, and it’s time for you to go! They took our passports away, they took our documents away, Stanisław did not have his passport yet, only a birth certificate. My sister Józefa and I were in our mum’s passport as children. Clear off, they are throwing all people out for transportation to Kazakhstan! And they threw us away. They came at night, took away what our mum had, a bit of everything. At night they brought us to the train to Kamianets, filled the train and we left in the morning. We were travelling 18 days. Such a freight train, not the one they have now, maybe one that carries rubble. Shelves , some people here, others there, with small kids. They closed the doors and the militiamen stood around to watch that nobody jumps out, that nobody runs away. Eighteen days passed in this way. We were eating bread and lard and drinking water, and, then, we ate all the bread and only hardtacks were left, and, then, we could not eat any more. People were dying terribly, small kids, old people, they would die right away. So many of them died that only few were left. They expelled us from our village…; it was the village of Janczyki and not Kolybaivka… There was a piece of a small meadow, from the khutor, from the statue, such a small piece between cottages. They expelled 87… It was a bunch of people with children, elderly people, altogether. It was a big train, all packed. And they threw us all out on the snow, it was already white there, snow, cold. Children were crying. Cossacks came to us on such ox-driven carriages with caissons. They put us on those carriages and drove 100 kilometres into an endless steppe."

• born on 6 November 1923 in the Polish village of Janczyki (now Kolybaivka) near Kamieniec Podolski (Kamianets Podilskyi)
• in 1932, a kolkhoz was established in the village, and her family farm was compulsorily incorporated into it
• in 1936, her family was deported to Kazakhstan together with other Polish families from the village of Janczyki
• for 12 years Rafaela Wróblewska lived in the village of Woronicz (Akmolinska Oblast)
• she worked in the local kolkhoz; she worked in the field and also cleaned filters in agricultural equipment - during that work she lost both hands injured by frostbite which had to be amputated
• in 1948, Rafaela Wróblewska returned to the Ukraine to her home village called Kolybaivka then
• her house was occupied by Ukrainian displaced persons and could have been bought back only after a few years following
• since her mother’s death in 1974 she has been running a small farm on her own in spite of her disability