For several months Bierut was district secretary of the KPP organization in Łódź. After the regional organization was demolished by arrests, in 1933 he became secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish section of the International Red Aid. On 18 December 1933, Bierut was arrested and in 1935 sentenced to seven years in prison. In 1936, while imprisoned, he was excluded "in absentia" from the KPP for an "unworthy of a communist behavior during the investigation and the court trial". The decision was invalidated and reversed by the Comintern on 7 September 1940 (even though the KPP by that time no longer existed). Bierut was found to have been a member of the moderate "majority" faction of the KPP, and the factional infighting in which he participated was determined not to amount to acting against the party.