We were welcomed in Czestochowa by members of Emaus, an academic chaplaincy connected to the famous monastery. Through their generosity, we had a guided visit to the Jasna Gora, an interview with former Soviet prisoner Franciszek Borkowski, and a group meeting with some young Czestochowans, talking about their faith, Catholicism in Poland, and the persistence of anti-Semitism.

The transcript of our interview with Mr. Borkowski follows:

TLP: How and when were you imprisoned?

Mr. Borkowski: I was sent to Kazakhstan on April 13, 1940, with my mother and grandmother. My father was arrested earlier - he disappeared without a trace. I was then 11 years old. My father was arrested because he was in a Lancer Company during World War I, and later, after the war, he was a Police Commandant.

TLP: What were your worst experiences?

Mr. Borkowski: The heat spells were very bad. The heat was terrible in the summer and the cold, the biting frost in winter. Apart from that, the food was very meager. We received 400g of bread and sometimes they brought some soup to the barrack. Near that river we mowed grass and, when finished, a tractor brought us a few kilometers further, where we mowed the grass again. During the harvest time we mowed the standing grain. I did not see my mother and grandmother for nearly a month; it was only after a month that they would allow me to see them. And so I stayed only with the Russians and Kazakhs.

TLP: Did you feel anger and a desire for revenge against Stalin and the Soviets?

Mr. Borkowski: For sure, we had a grudge against Stalin and the Soviet authorities (higher and lesser), but I have to admit that a Kazakh who was the sowkhoz chief was not so bad; in fact, he was even friendly. When we were so hungry working on the fields, near the crops with the harvest, everyone tried to smuggle a bit of the grains, putting it behind the shirt or in the leggings. He pretended not to see it. However, there were others who would punish you severely when you took a bit of grain.

TLP: During these six years of banishment what gave you the strength to survive, what gave you hope?

Mr. Borkowski: During the first months of exile we still had contact with family - my uncle, who lived in Lwow, wrote to us and we wrote to him. He sent us parcels until the start of the German-Soviet war. Those parcels were very helpful.

TLP: Would you, please, tell us about those pins you are wearing on your lapel?

Mr. Borkowski: This pin is a sign of SIBIRAK, the other one is a Trade Unions Pin, and that is a Decoration of Siberian Exiles. Our President has just now, after 60 years, awarded such decoration to those who were exiled there. I have to say that it is an honor to me that I am now considered to be an exile, because during the time of PRL, Communism, they did not call us exiles but rather deportees.

And a deportee is something completely different. Right now, it is someone who comes from another country, commits a crime, and thus is deported to the border of the country he came from or to the country of his origin, and there he goes free. But with us it was something completely different. I, along with many others, strived not to be called deportees, but exiles.

Just as they were exiles after the November Uprising, January Uprising, Kosciuszko Insurrection, those were exiles. Those were grown up people who actively fought the tsar. They were engaged in an armed struggle but here, for the first time, the exiles were infants, women and children, old people who never did anything wrong to anybody. And further, the former exiles were banished for a concrete length of time like 7 or 10 years. For example, Saint Rafal Kalinowski, our patron, was sent for 10 years and returned after 10 years. The same with Marshal Pilsudski, who also was sent for a set number of years, but he successfully escaped from there. And we did not do anything wrong and they took us away - just like that.