My name is Harry Grynberg from Losice in Eastern Poland, with thousands of other Poles, Jewish and non-Jewish, I crossed the River Bug into the USSR to escape the murderous Nazi jackboot. The Soviet authorities sent me to Minsk where I worked in the forests felling trees. I was later sent to work at a shoe factory in Minsk. After several months I went by train to Bialystok to visit family there. On the journey I was arrested by the Russian Secret Police (NKVD) and imprisoned as an 'enemy of the state'. I was taken to a prison in Brest Litovsk where I was locked up with thirty-five other prisoners in a cell built for seven people. The window was small and very high up. Here I existed in squalor for nine weeks starving and in the dark. After a prison number was given to me, I was photographed and fingerprints were taken. With other Poles and Jews I was taken by wagon, then cattle-train for great distances through the Russian wastelands to a forced labour camp in the remote town of Ukhta. On the four-day journey the only rations I received was salty fish. Thirst was unbearable because I was given no water to drink. Daily work at Ukhta consisted of felling trees waist-high in water, cleaning out rivers and building roads in extremely harsh conditions. I suffered starvation working through the bone chilling winters until the summer of 1941 when Hitler invaded Russia. General Sikorsky, head of the Free Polish Army, based in London, and General Anders made an agreement with Stalin to release approximately 230,000 deported Poles from the labour camps. This stipulated the creation of the Anders Army. Many prisoners left Ukhta and other labour camps. My comrades and I trekked through Russia and Iran to Palestine eventually reaching a Polish army camp in Galashields, Scotland where we all underwent full military training in preparation for D-Day, the liberation of Europe. After World War Two I settled in England, married, had one son and two grandchildren.