Uwagi nad pamiętnikiem Aleksandra Pieńkowskiego z Uzbekistanu i Kazachstanu

The goal of this article is to comment on the fragments of Aleksander Pieńkowski’s autobiography concerning his stay in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Pieńkowski, a shopkeeper in a Polish village, was one of the Polish citizens in areas of Poland annexed by the Soviets after 17 September 1939, who were arrested, investigated, tortured by KGB and deported in 1940 to labour camps in northern Russia. After the amnesty for the Polish deportees in 1941, he was allowed to leave his labour camp in Pechora and go to Uzbekistan to be recruited into the Polish Army. Since the southern Soviet Republics of the USSR were not prepared to deal with the great waves of Poles and Polish Jews arriving in Central Asia, he spent some time at various railway stations in Uzbekistan and was sent to southern Kazakhstan where he worked in a co-operative farm, but mostly served local Kazakhs, before he could finally cross the Soviet-Iranian border in 1942.