I left Starobelsk together with a group numbering a total of 16 persons on May 12 [1940].
Surprises awaited us already at the railway station; our party was pushed into prison cars - several men squeezed into each of the narrow compartments that were almost windowless and had doors strengthened with numerous bars. We could see Polish inscriptions on the walls - "they made us disembark near Smolensk". The crew servicing the car was extremely brutal. Practically, we were being let out of the compartment twice daily to go to the toilet. The food we were given consisted of small herrings and water exclusively. The heat was intense and it made many people faint but the escorting guards - well trained for their role, showed complete indifference. [...]
We were brought to a densely forested area - to another camp. The dreams about France, about Poland vanished. The camp, called "Pavlishchev-Bor", was situated deep in the heart of beautiful forests. We met there 200 colleagues from Kozelsk, 120 form Ostashkov, and 63 from Starobelsk. [...] After a few weeks we were all transported from there to Griazovets near Vologda, where we were kept until August 1941.
At first we were convinced that the rest of our colleagues experienced a fate similar to ours, that they were sent to similar small camps scattered over the entire territory of Russia. After a short time, however, we began to wonder what had happened to them because nearly every postcard arriving from Poland contained more and more anxious questions about the destiny of our colleagues from Starobelsk, Kozelsk and Ostashkov whom we had last seen before leaving for the new camp.
On the basis of these postcards from Poland we came to the conclusion as early as in the summer of 1940 that we were the only prisoners of war from these three camps about whose fates information was reaching Poland after April 1940.
J. Czapski, Wspomnienia starobielskie (Reminiscences from Starobielsk), Warszaw 1989