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.

On 30 January 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) decided to launch the largest resettlement operation in the entire history of the Soviet Union, still referred to today as the 'kulak deportation'.