Captured by the NKVD in early 1940 as a Polish army soldier soon after the Soviet invasion of Poland, Herling-Grudziński spent a year and a half in the Yertsevo camp.
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The Yertsevo labor camp was described in a book entitled A World Apart, written by the eminent Polish writer and philosopher Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, camp survivor and, later, political dissident under the communist system.