Soviet Union. 110,000 Polish prisoners set out on foot from the Gulag, sometimes marching thousands of kilometers, to reach the assembly point. They then boarded cargo ships in the Caspian Sea, reached Iran, received training from the British, moved first to Palestine and then to Egypt, and finally fought in Italy. Ultimately, they were unable to return to Soviet Poland, and almost all ended up in Great Britain, with some in the United States, Italy, and so on. They formed the Second Polish Army Corps, formed when Polish General Sikorski, head of the Polish government-in-exile, convinced Stalin to release all Polish prisoners in the Gulags to contribute to the Allied war effort.
