Father Jan Cieplak was auxiliary bishop of the Mogilev archdiocese, at that time the largest Roman Catholic archdiocese in the world, covering the whole of Russia up to Sakhalin.
The Polish-Bolshevik war broke out on 14 February 1919. The site of the first confrontation was the town of Mosty near Szczuczyn in the Grodno region, where Polish Army units halted the Red Army’s march.
On 31 October 1906 Marian Malinowski set off, as he himself put it, “on a journey into the unknown at government expense.”
Prayer of the Bar Confederates before the Battle of Lanckorona, oil painting by Artur Grottger.
