Aleksander Krzyżanowski Aleksander " Wilk " Krzyżanowski ( 1895 – 1951 ) was a Polish officer , major , member of the Polish resistance movement in World War II and Commandant of the Armia Krajowa in the Vilnius Region . Biography . Aleksander Krzyżanowski was born in Bryansk and was conscripted into the Russian Army during the First World War , where he first started to specialize in artillery . After Poland regained independence in 1918 he joined the Polish military , and took part in the Polish - Soviet War where he distinguished himself in 1919 receiving the Krzyż Walecznych medal , and in January 1920 he took part in the heavy fighting at the Battle of Daugavpils . During the interwar period in the Second Polish Republic he further continued his military career . At the time of the Nazi invasion of Poland ( September 1 , 1939 ) he was commanding the 26th Regiment of Light Artillery , attached to the Polish 26th Infantry Division , part of the Army Poznań under general Tadeusz Kutrzeba . His unit was destroyed during the battle of Bzura . Soon afterward he organized a partisan unit at Świętokrzyskie Mountains , but after this unit was defeated by the Germans he arrived in Warsaw by late October , and joined the first Polish resistance organizations , the Służba Zwycięstwu Polski . By November he was assigned to Wilno ( now known as Vilnius , Lithuania ) , at the same time occupied by the Soviet Union which divided Poland with the Nazi Germany according to the earlier concluded Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact . Soon SZP was transformed into Związek Walki Zbrojnej . When in April 1941 Soviet NKVD arrested the commander of the ZWP in the Vilnius region , general Nikodem Sulik , it was Krzyżanowski who " de facto " replaced him , and his position was officially confirmed by general Stefan Rowecki in August . In 1942 ZWP was transformed into Armia Krajowa ( AK ) . Krzyżanowski attempted to build a larger anti - German coalition and issued explicit orders that no ethnic group , including Jews , should be mistreated . He also opened negotiations with the representatives of the Lithuanian and Belorussian resistance but they were fruitless . The negotiations with the Soviets initially lead nowhere as well . The Soviet Union aimed to ultimately regain the control from Germany over the territories USSR annexed from Poland in 1939 and Joseph Stalin ' s aim to ensure that an independent Poland would never reemerge in the postwar period . The relationship between the Soviets and the Sikorski ' s Polish government in exile , formally a commanding force of the AK , was strained at best , especially in the wake of the evidence of the mass execution of the Polish POW officers by the Soviets at Katyn which was discovered in 1943 . As Soviet partisans increasingly engaged in terror against local population and attacked Home Army units , local AK commanders considered the Soviets as just another enemy . As ordered by Moscow on June 22 , 1943 the Soviet partisans started an open fight both against the German forces and the local Polish partisans . In January and February 1944 , in the wake of growing hostilities between the Soviet partisans and the AK forces Krzyzanowski conducted a series of negotiations with Germans . In effect of negotiations with Seidler for Rosenfield of the Nazi German Security Service near Wilejka and Julian Christiansen , the Chief of the Vilnius Abwehr , cooperation between Germans and the AK was established in the area of Krzyżanowski ' s units ' operation and , according to the report of the local Nazi official " three sizeable Polish detachments came over to our side and initially also fought well . " While Krzyzanowski refused to sign an explicit agreement on cooperation , the secret arrangement was made that the AK would " capture " the armaments and provisions left to them by Germans . As a result , the AK units in the area were armed by Germans , Germans pulled off their mobilization plans in the area ( leaving the territory for AK ' s mobilization campaign ) and largely totally withdrew , German spies and agent were spared by AK members and no AK members were executed by Germans in their reprisals against the local population . However any such arrangements were purely tactical and did not evidenced a type of ideological collaboration as shown by the Vichy regime in France , the Quisling regime in Norway or closer to the region , the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists . The Poles ' main motivation was to gain intelligence on German morale and preparedness and to acquire some badly needed weapons . There are no known joint Polish - German actions , and the Germans were unsuccessful in their attempt to turn the Poles toward fighting exclusively against Soviet partisans . Such collaboration of local commanders with the Germans was generally atypical and such incidents were condemned by AK High Command . In May 1944 Polish resistance units were attacked by the Local Lithuanian Detachment under general Povilas Plechavičius . Krzyżanowski attempted to negotiate , but Plechavičius demanded that AK and all Polish partisans were to retreat from Wilno region and accept Lithuanian sovereignty over that territory . Krzyżanowski would not agree to such a withdrawal and the fighting escalated , eventually culminating in the Polish victory over the Lithuanian collaborationist forces in the battle of Muravanaya Ashmyanka of May 13 - May 14 . After that battle Krzyżanowski attempted to resume negotiations but was ignored by the Lithuanian side . The increasing hostilities culminated in June , when Lithuanian pro - Nazi Lithuanian Security Police forces , which had recently suffered a loss of several members in a skirmish with AK , massacred 37 Polish civilians in Glinciszki , a village known to support the Polish partisans . Krzyżanowski ordered his forces to increase the activity against the Lithuanians in retribution and , according to the accounts published in Lithuania , his forces conducted a multitude of actions against the Lithuanian civil population . It is unclear whether he was aware of the Dubingiai incident , in which an AK unit massacred a number of Lithuanian civilians ( the number of victims estimates vary between 27 and close to a hundred or more ) . Although the Armia Krajowa ' s actions are still controversial in Lithuania , a Lithuanian historian Arunas Bubnys has stated that there were no mass murders by the AK ( the only exception being Dubingiai ) , but that the AK was guilty only of some war crimes against individuals or selected families . He also noted that accusations of genocide or widespread activities by the AK are false and have underlying political motives , including to counteract accusations of widespread German - Lithuanian collaboration and crimes committed by units such as the Lithuanian Secret Police . Beginning in the spring of 1944 the Polish underground was preparing for the major Operation Tempest , which was designed to cause a large scale uprising behind the German lines to prevent the Soviet takeover of the territory by establishing a local Polish administration before the Soviet ' s arrival , as a sign to the entire world that the Polish government in exile commanded significant Polish forces . Operation Tempest would also support of the Soviet Eastern Front offensive . In June Krzyżanowski and his subordinates prepared the plan for the liberation of Wilno : Operation Ostra Brama . On 2 July 1944 he gave orders to begin the operation on the 7 July , although because of the Soviet quick advance the operation was put into effect one day early ( on 6 July ) . Largely in the effect of the German - AK relationship in the area , only a third of the available AK force took part in the operation against the Nazis . In the end , the Polish forces had to cooperate with the Soviets to secure Wilno . After the Poles and Soviets defeated the Germans on July 17 , 1944 , Polish officers , including Krzyżanowski , who had been invited to a debriefing with the Soviets , were arrested and imprisoned . Krzyżanowski was in prison until 1947 . In August 1947 he escaped but was quickly re - arrested when he approached a Polish official who worked for the Polish communists . He was repatriated to Poland in October 1947 . He did not support any secret resistance against the Soviets , like Wolność i Niezawisłość , arguing that it was pointless in the face of Soviet numerical superiority and the Western betrayal , but he remained in contact with many of his former subordinates . He was however still viewed as a danger to the state by the Polish communist regime , and was arrested in 1948 by Polish secret police , Urząd Bezpieczeństwa . In the prison his health collapsed , and he died on September 29 , 1951 from tuberculosis . Posthumous . He was buried in an unmarked grave , but in the wake of destalinization in 1957 his body was exhumed and buried in the Powązki Military Cemetery . In 1994 he was posthumously promoted to the rank of general .