Attack on Hrubieszów The Attack on Hrubieszów was a joint action of the Polish post - Home Army ( AK ) organization Freedom and Independence ( WiN ) and the Ukrainian partisans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army ( UPA ) , which took place on the night of 27 May 1946 . It was the most significant joint action carried out by these two organizations , which had previously often fought one another , but which decided to cooperate in the face of the common threat from the Polish communists and the Soviet NKVD . Background . Between 1943 and 1944 , the Polish Home Army and the pro - Ukrainian independence Ukrainian Insurgent Army engaged each other in brutal fighting in the Lublin and Zamość region , while at the same time also fighting the Nazis and sometimes the Soviet partisans . After the entry of the Red Army into the area during Operation Bagration , the Soviet NKVD began persecuting members of both organizations ( even though the Home Army attempted to cooperate with the Red Army in Operation Tempest ) and the local civilian population . After the establishment in April 1944 of the Polish Committee of National Liberation ( PKNW ) ( a communist provisional government sponsored by the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin ) , the persecution intensified . As a result , faced with a common enemy which threatened to eliminate both anti - communist Poles and independence - minded Ukrainians , the two previous enemies took the first steps towards reconciliation . As early as September 1944 , the UPA commander in Eastern Galicia , Vasyl Sydor ( " Szelest " ) , issued an order ending general anti - Polish actions in the region ; from then on UPA units were only allowed to attack those Poles who served with the Soviets ( although it took several months for the orders to reach individual commanders in the field ) . In 1945 the AK issued a manifesto calling for an end to fighting between Poles and Ukrainians and for cooperation , printed it in 7 , 500 copies and distributed it in the surrounding villages . At the same time , the leadership of the UPA in the region made similar moves aimed at the same goal . After mediation by Catholic and Orthodox clergy , a meeting was arranged in Puszcza Solska ( Solska Forest ) between the commanders of both groups . The top commander on the Polish side was Marian Gołębiewski ( " Ster " ) and on the Ukrainian side Jurij Lopatynsky ( " Szejk " ) . The two sides agreed to stop fighting one another , on each other ' s areas of influence , to come to each other ' s aid in case of being attacked by communist forces , to put an end to mutual attacks on civilian targets , to share intelligence reports and to coordinate actions against communist agents and common bandit groups which plagued the area . According to some former soldiers of the unit , the agreement was in part due to pressure on the partisans that came from the local civilian population , which was sick of the fighting between the two groups . In September 1945 , the agreement was extended to include the Podlaskie and Chełm regions . Planning . In April 1946 , the first joint action was carried out : an attack on the rail station in Werbkowice . In May 1946 , a meeting took place in the village of Miętkie , between the Lublin region commanders of the two groups ; the Poles were represented by Wacław Dąbrowski ( " Azja " ) , the Ukrainians by Jewhen Sztendera ( " Pryrwa " ) . An attack upon the town of Hrubieszów was proposed by the WiN soldiers and accepted by the UPA . The purpose of the attack was to free political prisoners from the local prison , to destroy documents held by the communist security forces , to destroy the headquarters of the Committee for Resettlement ( which was in charge of deporting Ukrainians to the Soviet Union ) , and to destroy the precincts of the Polish secret police and the MO . Attack . The attack on the town began at 11 pm . One of the main commanders on the Polish side was Henryk Lewczuk ( " Hammer " ) , who later was a delegate to the Polish Sejm between 2001 and 2005 . Lewczuk led the best - armed Polish platoon in the attack , composed of 25 to 30 soldiers , all local volunteers ( Lewczuk did not allow some of his soldiers from the Kresy region to participate in the attack , due to their deep - seated animosity to the UPA ) . According to previously made plans , the partisans took control of the bridges and roads leading into Hrubieszów and then proceeded to the center , where their strategic objectives were located . There , as agreed , the UPA soldiers ( around 300 ) assaulted the building of the Committee for Resettlement , while the Poles ( around 150 soldiers ) attacked the headquarters and prison of the communist secret police and the local office of the Polish Communist Party . The Resettlement Committee building , however , was heavily fortified and staffed with experienced and well - armed NKVD troops , and the UPA attack stalled . The Poles were more successful ; using mine throwers they took the secret police building , freed about twenty prisoners and captured secret documents . After taking the party headquarters they also executed a two high - ranking communist officials . At dawn , the communist forces were supported by units of the Polish army that were stationed in the town . Quite likely , the regular army soldiers waited as long as they could before joining in the fighting , as WiN had infiltrated its ranks and had previously carried out an extensive anti - communist information campaign . Under attack by both the NKVD and regular army units , the UPA and the WiN soldiers began to withdraw . While fire fights and skirmishes occurred during the withdrawal between the partisans and the NKVD , the Polish soldiers mostly confined themselves to just following the partisans in their vehicles , without engaging them in direct fighting . One of the soldiers among the army units happened to be Wojciech Jaruzelski , the future communist leader of Poland , who declared martial law in 1981 . Jaruzelski ' s official website , in the " Diariusz " ( Diary ) section , states that from the fall of 1945 until 1946 , Jaruzelski took part in " fighting bandits of the armed underground and Ukrainian nationalist " in order to " defend the Polishness of Hrubieszow Land " . During the fighting , one of WiN ' s freed prisoners was accidentally killed by friendly fire and the commander of UPA was wounded . The Ukrainians lost two more men during the withdrawal . The Polish communists and Soviets lost from nine to fifteen men . Afterward . In the end , the action was partly successful . Documents of the secret police were captured , though not those of the Resettlement Commission . However , by the end of 1946 , the contacts between the two groups tapered off . The main initial reason for this was the negative attitude of the Polish underground ' s high command and of the Polish emigre government , the " Delegatura " , towards close cooperation with the UPA . The high command issued an order to forbid any further contacts with the UPA , although local contacts continued until at least the end of 1946 . One small UPA unit , led by Jan Niewiadomski ( " Jurka " ) , kept up contacts with the Polish underground until 1948 . By the spring of 1947 , however , most of the organized resistance , both Polish and Ukrainian , in the region had collapsed or significantly diminished . By this time , most Ukrainian civilians had been deported and resettled , either back to the Soviet Union or to other parts of Poland and as a result the UPA lost its base of support . Many Polish partisans came out of the underground during the Amnesty of 1947 and were subsequently arrested and persecuted , despite previous promises to the contrary ( the amnesty did not cover UPA soldiers ) . Still , some " cursed soldiers " held out in the forests as late as 1956 .