On the morning of 13 April 1940, NKVD soldiers came banging against the doors of the homes of more than 60,000 residents of eastern Poland. They ordered them to pack quickly and loaded them into cattle wagons.
On the night of 6 to 7 July (24/25 June old style) 1866, 5,000 kilometres east of their homeland, a group of January insurgents sent to Baikal for penal labour stirred up a rebellion, disarmed their guards and tried to forge an escape route to Mongolia.
Jan Kiliński - a shoemaker, Warsaw councillor, one of the commanders fighting in the Kościuszko Insurrection, a symbol of patriotism, today the patron of numerous streets, schools, scout troops... He is less known as an exile to Siberia.