1938-1945 studied at the University of Tartu, lawyer. During German occupation participated in national resistance, in spring 1944 arrested by the SD, released shortly before the withdrawal of Germans from Estonia in September 1944. In 1944-46 he was a lecturer at the University of Tartu. In 1946 he was arrested by the Soviet State Security for participation in the national resistance, sentenced to five years in a prison camp; after the end of the term in the prison camps in Komi ASSR exiled to Krasnoyarsk Krai. 1954 returned to his homeland, freelance writer. One of the best-known Estonian novelists and poets. 1992-1993 Member of the Estonian Parliament and simultaneously Chairman of the Estonian State Commission for the Investigation of Repressive Politics of the Occupying Powers. Then a writer again. Since 1988 published many short stories and novels, based on his personal experiences in the national resistance and in German and Soviet prisons. Doctor honoris causa of the universities of Helsinki

Son of a Spanish anarchist. In the second half of the 1920s served in the Spanish Navy and Foreign Legion during the Rif War in Morocco, deserted to the Rifians. After the amnesty lived in Spain. During the Spanish Civil War served in the Republican Army, was among the best known republican commanders (nickname El Campesino). Got acquainted with the foreign Communists and Soviet military advisers. In spring 1939 was taken from France to the Soviet Union with other commanders and fighters of the Republican Army and Spanish Communists. Served in the Red Army in the rank of Brigade Commander. Joined the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, but was soon arrested by the NKVD and accused of espionage. Was in GULAG camps in Vorkuta and then in Turkmenistan. At the end of the 1940s fled from the camp, succeeded in crossing the Soviet border to Iran and went from there to Europe. Lived in Metz in France, returned to Spain in 1977 after Franco’s death. Published memoirs “La vie et la mort en U.R.S.S. (1939–1949)” (1950). Credit: public domain

Poet and translator. In the years 1954-1956, he studied Latvian philology at the Latvian State University in Riga. Later he continued his studies at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute in Moscow. Together with a group of other young Latvians, he became involved in the preparations for the creation of the "Baltic Federation", the purpose of which was to counteract the Sovietisation of the Baltic states. In 1962, he was charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda and sentenced to 7 years at a correctional labour camp. He served his sentence entirely in Mordovia, in the Dubravny Camp (known as Dubravlag) in the Soviet Union. He was not able to publish his poems written during his imprisonment until 1990. On 6 June 1989, Skujenieks was officially rehabilitated. Credit: Maliepa - CC BY-SA 2.0

Graduated from the University of Tartu as a lawyer in 1935, Master of Law 1939. 1936-42 assistant and research fellow at the Department of Civil Law of the University of Tartu, 1942-44 Leader of the Student Body of the university. In spring 1944, during the fights in Estonia, mobilised to the German Armed Forces as a former reserve officer of the Estonian army. Stayed in Estonia during German withdrawal from Estonia in autumn 1944. Then a member of the armed resistance (“Forest Brothers”), later lived illegally. Arrested by the Soviet State Security in 1955 and sentenced to 25 years in a prison camp; was in the Dubravny Camp (Dubravlag) in Mordovia. Released only in 1980 partly because he had refused to ask for pardoning. Was not allowed to return to his homeland, until 1989 lived in Pechory (Petseri) near the border of the Estonian SSR. Credit: Estonian National Archives

Lawyer, social-democratic politician, cooperative movement activist. While still in school, he joined a socialist youth organisation, continuing his activity while studying at the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". He graduated in 1927, then left for Belgium, where he studied international relations at the Free University of Brussels. Simultaneously he worked at the Labour and Socialist International; in 1929 he became a member of the Executive Committee. In 1936 he got a Ph.D. and returned to Bulgaria, where he became engaged in the activities of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. He was also active in the cooperative movement. In 1938-1940 Moskov was a member of the Bulgarian parliament. During World War II he opposed the authorities, who made an alliance with Germany. After the coup of September 1944, he became a member of the party leadership and editor of the "Свободен народ" (Free Nation) journal. In 1946 he won a seat in the parliament while running against the Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov; the election was invalidated. He was fired from the university and imprisoned in 1947. Held in the camp at Bogdanovdol, among other places. Released briefly, he was again imprisoned without a sentence in 1951 and placed in the forced labour camp on Belene island. Released in 1955, could not find a job for a long time. Ultimately, he was hired for a low-level bureaucratic position in a psychiatric hospital. In November 1989 he was a co-initiator of the rebuilding of the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers’ Party and its first new leader. Credit: bulgarianhistory.org/

Witold Borowski was born in 1913 in Radom, Poland. During the interwar period he was a member of the National Party and the All-Polish Youth Academic Union and was politically active against authorities of the Second Polish Republic. When World War II broke out, he volunteered for the armed forces. During the war Borowski engaged in underground activities and, ultimately, he became a member of the National Party’s Main Military Board within Polish National Armed Forces. He took part in the Warsaw Uprising. During the Red Army offensive in 1945, Borowski was arrested and imprisoned by the NKVD in the Rembertów camp. He was part of the group that was preparing an operation to break out of the camp from the inside with the help of partisan units that took place on 29 May 1945. Witold Borowski was free, but only for a short time. He was shot dead on 2 June during a raid of the NKVD and Polish Ministry of Public Security in Antonin near Minsk Mazowiecki. Credit: public domain

Margvelashvili was born in Berlin to Georgian parents who had moved to Germany after the Red Army invasion of Georgia in 1921. During World War II he was a part of anti-Nazism youth movement Swingjugend (Swing Kids). Shortly before the end of World War II, he and his father escaped from Germany to Italy where his sister lived. After a few months Givi and his father returned to Berlin. In December 1945 both were abducted by the NKVD (Soviet secret police). After eight months of interrogations, his father was shot as a traitor and Givi was interned in NKVD camps in Germany: Hohenschönhausen and then Sachsenhausen, the former Nazi concentration camp. After 18 months in the camp he joined his relatives in Tbilisi, but at this point he didn’t know Russian or Georgian. Later he graduated from Tbilisi State Institute of Foreign Languages and worked there as the German and English Language teacher afterwards. He also worked at the Soviet Georgian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Philosophy from 1971. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, Margvelashvili settled in Berlin and received German citizenship through naturalisation in 1994. Credit: Zangala

Olimpiada was born in Mîndrești in the Kingdom of Romania in present-day Moldova. Between 1945–1950, she was a member of an anti-Soviet organisation in Bessarabia, led by her husband Filimon. At the beginning they were just organising “meetings with the peasants” at homes of some of the participants, where he spoke of the danger of Sovietisation and forced collectivisation. At first, this group was aimed at Communist propaganda, but became more aggressive and physical after the Soviet Ministry of State Security (MGB) prosecutions. On 16 November 1950 Filimon, Olimpiada and two other members were hiding in Mîndrești village, but they were tracked down by the MGB. In the shooting that followed Filimon was killed and Olimpiada was seriously injured and arrested. Tried by a military tribunal together with other members of the Bodiu resistance group, she was sentenced on 8 June 1951 to 25 years hard labour. In 1954 her sentence was reduced to 15 years of detention, which she spent at the Dubravlag GULAG camp. After her release in 1965, Bodiu settled in the Moldovian SSR and died there in 1971.

Paul Chaleil was born in 1913 in Marseilles, France. He graduated from the Russicum in Rome and was ordained a priest of the Eastern Rite in 1933. From 1939 he served at the Eastern Mission in Harbin, China and remained there also during the Japanese occupation. After 1948, when Harbin was taken by the Chinese Red Army, Chaleil was arrested and handed over to the USSR Ministry of State Security representatives. In 1949 he was accused of being a “Vatican spy” and sentenced to ten years in a corrective labour camp in Tayshet in the Soviet Union. The Tayshet camp was known for harsh conditions and according to some survivor accounts there is “a dead man under every [railway] sleeper” between Tayshet and Bratsk. Chaleil was granted an early release in 1956 and he returned to France. That same year he founded the Franco-Russian cultural centre “Aux deux ours” in Paris, at which seminars on Russian history and current problems of life in the USSR were held. In 1967 he translated Anatoly Kuznetsov’s novel “Suite d'une legend” (Sequel to a Legend) from Russian to French, recounting the life of the pioneers engaged on the Siberian construction sites of the Irkutsk dam.

Born in Skalat, Ukraine, studied at the University of Berlin. Exmatriculated in 1933 because he was Jewish. Left Germany and lived in France, worked in the office of the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In 1939, he was interned in France as a German citizen, and escaped in 1940 to Switzerland. In 1942–1944 he was imprisoned because of Communist activities and suspicions of espionage and then interned. In 1945, he returned to Germany, and was one of the Communist leaders in Hesse until 1949. He was then invited to East Berlin by the East German Communist Party (SED). Was arrested by the Stasi during a purge in the SED in 1950 and handed over to the Soviet State Security. In 1952, he was sentenced to death in a show trial as an American spy, but the sentence was changed to 25 years of forced labour in Siberia. Bauer was released in 1955 and sent to West Germany. From 1961 he was the political editor of the magazine “Stern” and from 1968–1975 editor-in-chief of the journal of the German Social-Democratic Party (SPD) “Die Neue Gesellschaft”. Was adviser to the Chairman of the SPD Willy Brandt. Credit: public domain

Lidija was born in Ljubljana in 1931. In 1947, when she was a student of the classical gymnasium, she was part of the illegal anti-Communist organisation Christian Democratic Youth, the goal of which was liberation of Slovenia. The organisation was betrayed in June 1949 and many of its members were arrested – Lidija Drobnič was one of them. Without ever being put on trial, she was sentenced to 24 months of community work. She was taken to the camp for women in Ferdreng, where around 700 females, mostly political prisoners, were imprisoned. Internees were sentenced to perform "socially useful work" at the concentration camp; the labour involved destroying the local Gottschee German cemetery, breaking rocks into gravel for the roads, and destroying church statuary. The camp was modelled on Nazi concentration camps, with barbed wire, guard towers, and prisoners' barracks. In October 1949, she was transferred from Ferdreng to Škofja Loka Castle. She was released in March 1950. After being released from the camp, each internee had to sign a statement that she would never tell anyone about the camp or what was happening there. She completed high school and then studied law and became a successful lawyer. At a time of democratic changes in Slovenia, Lidija Drobnič became very active: she became a member of the Slovenian Christian Democrats and a co-founder of the Association of Political Prisoners. Credit: Študijski center za narodno spravo

He was ordained a Greek Catholic priest in Uzhgorod (at the Slovak-Ukrainian border, today part of Ukraine), in September 1913. From 1913 to 1928, he worked as a parish administrator in Stročín. From 1928 to 1950, he worked as a pastor in Prešov. The Czechoslovak State Security (ŠtB) detained him on 27 April, on the eve of the so-called Prešov Sobor, the Communist action aimed at eliminating the Greek Catholic church entirely. From May to September 1950, he was interned in the Forced Labour Camp in Nováky. For the next two years, he was interned by the Communist regime in disciplinary monasteries in the towns of Hlohovec, Podolínec, Mučeníky (today Močenok), and Báč. He lived in western Slovakia and returned to Prešov as late as in 1954. From 1955, he was leading the underground Greek Catholic Church. He would hold secret meetings and encourage former priests to keep the faith. He would also write resolutions to the government of Czechoslovakia and Orthodox authorities, calling for restoration of the Church. In 1958, he was detained by the ŠtB and accused of spying for The Vatican. He was sentenced to life in prison. As a result of harsh prison conditions, he died in the prison hospital in Brno on 9 August 1959. Credit: public domain

Lived in Brussels, was mobilised to the Belgian Army in 1939. In 1940 retreated to France, was taken prisoner by the Germans, released, and returned to his homeland. In 1942 was sent to Germany, and worked at a military industry company near Berlin. After some unsuccessful attempts to escape to Belgium was sent in 1943 to Ukraine and worked for a German construction company in Rivne. Joined the underground Ukrainian Insurgent Army and due to his language skills worked at the radio station “Independent Ukraine”. Was wounded in a skirmish with NKGB troops in April 1945 and taken prisoner. Hasenbroekx was sentenced to 10 years of hard labour. He was in GULAG camps in Vorkuta and then in a camp near Novokuznetsk in Siberia. Hasenbroekx was released after Stalin’s death in the summer of 1953 and returned to his homeland in October. Credit: public domain

Armanda was born in Rome, Italy. From a young age, she studied music and performed many leading mezzo-soprano roles in spectacles in Italy, South America, and Imperial Russia. One of her most well-known title roles was Carmen at the Teatro Bellini in Naples in 1902. After her marriage in 1904, she retired from the stage. From then on, she taught singing in Rome and was a member of the Russian Circle. In 1926 she settled in Estonia where she became a noted vocal pedagogue and trained a generation of Estonian opera singers. With the Soviet occupation of Estonia, she was considered to be a fascist Italian citizen; in 1941 she was sentenced as an enemy alien and deported to a prison camp in Karaganda in what is nowadays Kazakhstan. One of the main reasons for creating a labour camp there was the establishment of a large agricultural base supported by free labour for the rapidly growing industry in Central Kazakhstan, Karaganda Coal Basin in particular. Many inmates in Karaganda were prisoners sentenced as "enemies of the people". The last known piece of information about Armanda’s whereabouts is a letter from 27 March 1946. She probably died in the same year in Karlag in Karaganda. Credit: Marina Mikk-Murakinale

Padraic was born in London to Irish emigrant parents. After returning to Ireland as a teenager and being influenced by an uncle he joined the Communist Party of Ireland in 1922. Upon the dissolution of the Party a year later, he joined the new Irish affiliate of the Communist International, the Irish Worker League (IWL). Padraic, as a leading activist in the youth section, was sent by IWL to study at the International Lenin School in Moscow in 1928. In 1929 he met and married Yekaterina Kreizer. Around this time Breslin was expelled from the International Lenin School for "ideological divergence" for his rejection of Marxist materialism. The authorities allowed him to remain in Moscow where he worked as a teacher, translator and journalist. In the midst of a marital breakdown culminating in divorce, he met and married Maighréad Nic Mhaicín, an Irish translator working in Moscow in 1936. His second wife gave birth to a child in Ireland in 1938, but Padraic was denied a visa to go to Ireland and Maighréad was in turn denied the possibility to re-enter the Soviet Union. In the meantime, his first wife was arrested and imprisoned, so he was caring for the children from his first marriage. In December 1940 he was arrested and accused of being a foreign agent. In September 1941 he was sentenced to 8 years detention for "counter-revolutionary agitation". As a consequence, he was imprisoned in several facilities and ultimately sent to Volgolag corrective labour camp, where he died a few days later of tuberculosis. His health had deteriorated after earlier interrogations and imprisonment, but he possibly could have been shot to death. Credit: public domain

Was born in Pinsk (currently in Belarus), graduated from the University of Berlin in 1929. Until 1936 he lived in Poland, then moved to Palestine as a member of the Zionist movement. Was in Łódź in Poland, in September 1939, when the city was conquered by the Red Army. Julius Margolin was arrested by the NKVD in 1940 and sent to the GULAG in Arkhangelsk Oblast as a “socially dangerous element”. In March 1946, he was released and sent to Poland, from where he returned to Palestine. Margolin testified on the Soviet camp system at the hearing at The United Nations Economic and Social Council. He was also a key witness at the trial of David Rousset, who was accused of revealing information about the GULAG to the French public. As a spokesman for the truth about Soviet totalitarianism, Margolin had to struggle with the amazing experience of rejection in the West, because his testimony was against the notions of the Soviet system. Later he emigrated to Palestine and settled in Tel Aviv. Julius Margolin published his memoirs “La condition inhumaine. Cinq ans dans les camps de concentration Soviétiques” in 1949. The memoirs were translated to Russian, German and English. Credit: public domain

Greek Catholic priest, archbishop of Lviv (since 1944), cardinal (since 1965). He studied in Lviv, then in Innsbruck. He was ordained a priest in 1917. In 1925 became the rector of the Greek Catholic Seminary. In December 1939 he was consecrated as coadjutor archbishop of the Lviv metropolis with the right of succession after the death of archbishop Andrzej Szeptycki. When the latter died in November 1944, Slipyj took over the archdiocese; he also became the apostolic administrator of the Kyiv diocese. In April 1945 he was arrested along with all Greek Catholic bishops by the NKVD, in 1946 sentenced to eight years in a forced labour camp. Released in 1953, refused to convert to Orthodoxy. Sentenced to exile in Siberia, in 1958 arrested again and sentenced to seven years of forced labour. In January 1963 pardoned due to the efforts of Pope John XXIII supported by President John F. Kennedy. After release, he went to Rome, where he actively participated in the Second Vatican Council. In 1965 Slipyj was appointed cardinal. He took multiple efforts to strengthen the Greek Catholic Church, e.g. by creating the Ukrainian Catholic University of St. Clemens. Protested openly against the persecution of the Church in the USSR. He was an initiator of the celebrations of the millennium since the baptism of Rus’. Credit: Pkravchenko / - CC BY-SA 3.0

Born in Katowice to a wealthy Polish family. Her father, a member of the Polish Home Army, was executed during the war. After World War II she was taken with her German mother to the Świętochłowice-Zgoda camp. This place was one of the camps that repurposed the Nazi infrastructure, abandoned by the retreating Wehrmacht. The camp was a place where "enemies of the system" ended up, such as Silesians, citizens of the Second Polish Republic, those who signed the so-called Volkslist, as well as soldiers of the Polish Home Army. Many, such as Boreczek, were brought here straight from their houses, without any documents being checked. At the camp, Boreczek was beaten and tortured. Dorota’s mother, suffering from typhus, was beaten to the point that her skull fractured. From that moment on, Dorota had to look after her mother. Due to very difficult working conditions and terrible dietary conditions, almost 2,000 people died in the camp during the 10 months of its operation. Dorota Boreczek was only 14 years old then. In the 1970s she left for Germany. She was banned from returning to the country because she "represented a hostile attitude towards the Polish People's Republic". Dorota Boreczek returned to the country in 1991 after the fall of Communism. Credit: Mateusz Wyrwich, „Tygodnik Solidarność”

He was born in Krujë. Politically persecuted because he was the son of Abaz Kupi, who led the Albanian military forces in the armed resistance against the Italian fascist occupation. After the Italian capitulation, Abaz Kupi became the political and military leader of the monarchist forces which together with the National Front republican nationalists were the two main anti-communist forces. While the communists won the civil war (1943-44), Abaz Kupi left Albania for good with two of his sons. Family assets seized during the fascist regime in 1939 were seized again by the communist regime. Also, his entire family in Albania was persecuted. Fatbardh was arrested in 1945 at age of 17. On 17 December 1946, the Court Martial of Tirana convicted him to 5 years in prison as a "war criminal" and "enemy of the people". Upon release in 1950, he was interned in Porto-Palermo. In 1951, he was sent to the Tepelenë camp where he had his family – his mother and four sisters. Until 1991, he and his family members lived in camps or prisons. On 25 November 1981, he was convicted to 10 years in prison and 5 years in interment on the charge "agitation and propaganda". In 1989 he returned to his family in internment. Credit: public domain

Was born in 1902 to a farmer's family. In 1926, while he was living in Kaunas, he had to quit both his job and his Lithuanian language and literature studies because of illness resulting in his partial paralysis. Genys returned to his homeland. After a period of mental breakdown, he started his work for the community. He went around in his wheelchair, interacted with people, and took an interest in folk art. In 1929 he published the first book of poems Joy Bells (Džiugo varpai), in 1935 lyrics Offerings (Atnašavimai) and in 1941 Caregivers (Rūpintojėliai). Pranas was also invested in Samogitian folk culture and was the founder and first director of the Samogitian Museum “Alka”. During World War II his brother Juozas was deported to Siberia and his sister Stasė took part in the resistance, was arrested, and sentenced to 25 years. After the war, he was fired by new authorities from the museum he founded and worked as a teacher at a gymnasium in Pagėgiai. In 1951, Genys was arrested on charges of liaison with guerrilla resistance during the war. For three months he underwent interrogation during which his own poetry books were presented as evidence against him. He was imprisoned in the Macikai camp and died there in 1952. After his tragic death in the camp, his name was not mentioned in the Lithuanian SSR and his work was not printed. Credit: Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania

Born in 1926 into the family of Tilică Ioanid, politician and minister in the Romanian Government. In 1945, he enrolled in law school but was expelled in the third year because of his "unhealthy social origin" due to his family bourgeois status and political activities. He was arrested for the first time in 1949 for alleged espionage but was freed a few days later after beatings and interrogations. In 1952, Ion was arrested again, this time for "high treason", and sentenced to 20 years of forced labour. It was a mock trial. In 1953 Ion was transferred to the Cavnic labour camp and was assigned to start work at this new lead mining facility. Ioanid was determined to take the necessary risks and attempt an escape with a group of prisoners he had befriended. The group escaped on 6 June 1953. Ioanid obtained fake identification and worked in Drăgășani, but unfortunately when returning from his work site on 13 September he was arrested. For years he was detained in Pitești, Jilava, Oradea, Timişoara and Aiud prisons. Between 1962-1964 he was sent to Salcia labour camp. Ioanid experienced the same behaviour and routines as in Cavnic. Overall, he spent 12 years in prisons and forced labour camps. Ion was released in 1964 thanks to a pardon decree. Ion Ioanid is well known for his memoirs about this period of time called Give Us Each Day Our Daily Prison (Închisoarea noastră cea de toate zilele). On the pages, he recollects the time spent in prisons and labour camps. In 1969, he went to Germany and was granted political asylum. Settled in Munich, he worked for twenty years as an announcer and journalist for the Romanian section of Radio Free Europe. He died on 12 October 2003. Credit: Fundaţia Academia Civică

Born in Ingria. From 1921, he served as a preacher and a priest in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria. In 1927, he took up the post of pastor to the municipality of Lempaala. Because Lempaala was located in the Finnish-Soviet border zone, Kuortti had to apply for permits to travel from the local Soviet OGPU office. The Soviets offered him the possibility to have a permanent cross-border permit if he would act as a spy, which he declined. From then on, the repercussions began and Kuortti had constant problems with renewing his permit. In 1930, during the routine permit-renewing visit to the Soviet administration offices, he was imprisoned and accused of counter-revolutionary activities. On 4 February 1930, Kuortti was finally sentenced to death. When Adam Kuortti was transferred from the remand prison to the St. Petersburg Military Prison, he was informed that his sentence had been reviewed. According to the new decision, he had been sentenced to ten years in a segregated forced labour camp. He was taken to USLON Magrino camp in Karelia. The conditions in the camp were poor; the work was hard, the guards were former criminals, and the accommodation and food were poor. Kuortti began planning an escape from the camp and Finally, on 9 June 1930, he escaped. He travelled over 300 km on foot, which took him 12 days. Kuortti wrote about his prison camp experiences in two memoirs. His books were one of the first testimonies and memoirs on Soviet repression and prison camps published in Finland. Kuortti worked as a teacher and priest until the end of his life. Credit: SKS KIA, Kuortti-perheen arkisto / CC BY 4.0

During World War II he was a cadet and interpreter. In 1947, he was arrested based on false accusations. He was detained at the headquarters of the Political Police and then at the Soviet headquarters. After that, he was interned by the State Protection Authority. First, he was taken to the Kistarcsa Central Internment Camp, then to the Recsk Forced Labour Camp. About 1,500 prisoners were held there without any trial. Michnay was held in inhumane conditions, with constant starvation, labour to exhaustion, and constant terror, beatings, and torture. On 20 May 1951, he escaped from Recsk with eight of his fellow prisoners. Seven of the escapees were soon detained but Gyula managed to get out of the country. He went to Vienna, then to Munich. Michnay's personal mission was to inform the public about the atrocities committed in Recsk Forced Labour camp in Hungary, but in the beginning, nobody believed him. Finally, in the autumn of 1951, Radio Free Europe aired Michnay reading the names of nearly 600 prisoners. He remembered the names of inmates by heart because the prisoners could not possess any paper. This was the first time that the West learned about the existence of the camp. Also, it was the first time that some family members in Hungary got to know that their “disappeared” family member was still alive. Michnay settled down in Germany. Credit: munkataborok.hu

Throughout the 1920s and 30s, he graduated from Charles University in Prague and worked as a teacher in the Belarusian Gymnasium of Vilnia, while also taking part in Belarusian activities in the Second Polish Republic. When World War II broke out, he was arrested by the NKVD. While imprisoned he was interrogated and tortured. He was named a "socially dangerous element ", an enemy of the people and the Soviet regime, and sentenced to eight years in a labour camp. Žuk-Hryškievič was sent to forced labour camps in Kotlas and Vorkuta respectively. In 1942, as a result of a Sikorski-Mayski agreement, he was amnestied as a Polish citizen and fought in the Polish Armed Forces in the East in Egypt and Italy, including the Battle of Monte Cassino. After the war, he remained in the West. He was one of the founders of the Association of Belarusians in Great Britain. He also gained a Ph.D. in Literature at the University of Ottawa in Canada. For two years in the 1950s, Žuk-Hryškievič managed the Belarusian section of Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany. In 1956, he returned to Canada and continued his social activities. Vincent Žuk-Hryškievič was president of the government-in-exile of the Belarusian Democratic Republic between 1971 and 1982. Credit: public domain