The date of 11 November 1918, being the day on which Poland regained its independence, is a symbolic date. Exactly on that day, an armistice ending the First World War was concluded in a wagon in the forest of Compiègne.
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.
