The Wierzchowski family lived in Bydgoszcz before the war. Antoni Wierzchowski worked there as a clerk in the French-Polish Railway Company. Fearing a German attack, he was ordered to pack the company’s documentation and evacuate it to the east. The four-person Wierzchowski family: Antoni, his wife Halina and daughters (Hanna and Zofia) set off on a journey into the unknown, reaching first the town of Rozhyshche near Lutsk, and then the village of Kopachivka. On June 3, 1940, they moved to Volodymyr-Volynskyi, from where they planned to return to Bydgoszcz. However, it turned out differently. On June 29, 1940, the family was deported to Sybir. Shortly after returning to Poland, one of the daughters, Zofia, wrote a diary. This is how she described the events of that night:
“On the night of June 29, we were deported from Volodymyr to Sybir. Already in the evening, there was anxiety in the house (probably the settler’s house) we occupied, where we were waiting for the commission to allow us to return home. Around midnight, an NKVD truck arrived. The comrades surrounded our house and shouted »sobirajties – 5 minut wremieni« (Gear up! You have five minutes!) and that was all. An unforgettable sight. Guns in the windows and doors around us… We were told (probably to avoid scenes) that we were going home and we wouldn’t need the potatoes and other things we started packing there. My mother asked a companion to help tie the bags, but he refused, and he took my father’s bike and wrote out a receipt.”
The Wierzchowski family ended up in the Novosibirsk Oblast, and after the amnesty they moved to southern Kazakhstan, where they worked in the Majun-Kum kolkhoz. Antoni joined the Polish Army formed by gen. Władysław Anders. He met his wife and daughters again only in 1947, after returning to Poland.
