Anna is 46 years old. She has three children. For making donations, she was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. She went through a remand centre and Correctional Facility No. 4 in Homiel, and in December 2025 she was among the political prisoners who, after their release, were taken from Belarus to Poland.
Anna now lives in Warsaw. She works in a bakery, baking croissants and making custom cakes. She is having to start a new life almost from scratch.
“Little by little, the correctional facility and the remand centre are fading from my memory. They no longer appear in my dreams as often as they used to. It feels like that chapter is finally behind me. A new life is beginning.
I understand that I am safe now and no longer need to be afraid of people in uniform. Recently, I saw a police wagon in Warsaw. It was very beautiful and modern, but it sparked nothing more than aesthetic interest in me.”
But freedom turned out to be nothing like she had imagined it during her detention.
“People often ask: ‘How are you coping without your children? Do you miss them?’ I don’t understand why people ask such questions. It is incredibly hard for me to be here without them. My heart literally bleeds. Whenever I walk past a school or a kindergarten, I think about how my sons could be going to that school too, coming home every day. But I have been deprived of that. They are growing up without me.
That is the worst thing — being separated from your children. So please, don’t ask mothers in exile what it’s like without their children. It is so unbearably hard for them that you do not need to know.”
After her release, Anna had to start her life over. Unexpectedly, what became her support was something she had loved long before her arrest — baking. Anna works in a bakery and says that for the first time in a long while, she feels she is exactly where she belongs.
“When you work with dough, cream, and cake layers, everything becomes somehow more understandable. There is a recipe, there is a sequence of steps, and there is a result. Sometimes that is exactly what is missing in life. I like the way I feel when I bake. I feel that I am where I belong.
At the very least, I want to become a partner in the business where I work now. At most, I want to open my own bakery. Here or in Belarus. Why not? After all, you can dream.”
Anna did not return home, and she did not return to her former life. But today she is free and building a new one. Support will help her move forward with greater confidence and take another step toward the future she thought about throughout all the years of her imprisonment.
Fundraiser Goal:
€3,000
€1,200 – housing rent for 2 months
€950 – equipment and tools for making cakes and desserts
€550 – ingredients and consumable supplies
€300 – reserve fund and development of private orders