When Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September of 1939 , Mikołajczyk was a private in the Polish army , and served in the defence of Warsaw . After the fall of Warsaw he escaped to Hungary , where he was interned . He soon escaped and made his way to Paris via Yugoslavia and Italy . By the end of November , Mikołajczyk had reached France where he was immediately asked to join the Polish government in exile as deputy Chairman of the Polish National Council . In 1941 he was appointed Minister of the Interior and became Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski 's Deputy Prime Minister . In April 1943 the Germans had announced that they had discovered the graves of almost 22,000 Polish officers who had been murdered by the Soviets at Katyń Wood . The Soviet government said that the Germans had fabricated the discovery . The Allied governments , for diplomatic reasons , formally accepted this , but Mikołajczyk 's government refused to do so , and Stalin then severed relations with the government in exile
Katyń Wood
Katyn massacre
Stanisław Mikołajczyk