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.

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.