On October 30, 1989 three thousand people with candles in their hands surrounded the KGB building in Moscow. They wanted to show they remember about the victims of the Stalin crimes.

On 24 March 1942, the first stage of the evacuation of the soldiers serving in the so-called Anders Army from the Soviet Union to Persia began. About 78,000 exiles, who joined the Polish army and 37 thousand civilians, including about 18,000 Polish children were evacuated in total.

Helena Grodecka-Możdżeniowa, was one of about 90,000 victims of the third great deportation, which began on 29 June 1940. Most of those deported were refugees from the German occupation, mostly Jews. Poles accounted for about 11 per cent.

On April 3,1940, the first “death transport” of Polish prisoners of war set off from the Kozelsk camp.

On 4 February 1940 (presumably!), Nikolai Yezhov, one of the cruellest perpetrators of Stalinist terror, was executed.

There was a time when large numbers of Poles in the Soviet Union lost their lives simply because of their origin and surname. One of the elements of the “Great Terror” unleashed by Stalin in 1937-1938 was the so-called “Polish Operation”, in which NKVD officers, on suspicion of espionage, mu