During World War II, a significant number of Alliance members were involved in the anti-Nazi Polish underground. One of its major leader was active in the Vila Ghetto. It was partly due to their initiative that Żegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, was founded in 1942 as well as the Social Organisation for Self-Defence. The Alliance of Democrats and other political and social organisations set up the Association of Democrats, which then entered the Council of National Unity, the Polish Underground State Parliament. In 1943 SD split into two factions, one of which supported the Polish Government-in-Exile in London, and the second co-operated with the communist Polish Workers' Party and recognized the State Country Council as the actual parliament and the Provisional Government of National Unity as the actual government of Poland. In 1945, following the Red Army seizure of Poland, two members of the Association, Eugeniusz Czarnowski and Stanisław Michałowski, were arrested by the NKVD and tried in the Stalinist-orchestrated Trial of the Sixteen, aimed at eliminating non-communist Polish political leadership.