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 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 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.
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.
On 23 July 1920, the first ship from Vladivostok with Polish children evacuated from Siberia arrived in Tsuruga, Japan. By 1922, a total of more than 700 kids had arrived in the Land of the Cherry Blossom. Their first stops were the cities of Tsuruga and Osaka.
