The Home Army was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej established in the aftermath of the German and Soviet invasions in September 1939. Over the next two years, the Home Army absorbed most of the other Polish partisans and underground forces. Its allegiance was to the Polish government-in-exile in London, and it constituted the armed wing of what came to be known as the Polish Underground State. Estimates of the Home Army's 1944 strength range between 200,000 and 600,000. The latter number made the Home Army not only Poland's largest underground resistance movement but, along with Soviet and Yugoslav partisans, one of Europe's largest World War II underground movements.
The Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population, against the Polish minority in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia, and the Lublin region from 1943 to 1945.
27th Volhynian Infantry Division was a World War II Polish Home Army formed in the Volhynia region in 1944. It was created on January 15, 1944, from smaller partisan self-defence units during the Volhynia massacre and was patterned after the prewar Polish 27th Infantry Division.
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and partisan formation founded by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists on 14 October 1942. During World War II, it was engaged in Nazi collaborationism. However, the UPA later launched guerrilla warfare against Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and both the Polish Underground State and Polish Communists. It conducted the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, which are recognized by Poland as a genocide.
Operation Vistula was the codename for the 1947 forced resettlement of close to 150,000 Ukrainians from the south-eastern provinces of post-war Poland, to the Recovered Territories in the west of the country. The action was carried out by the Soviet-installed Polish communist authorities to remove material support to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army continued its guerrilla activities until 1947 in Subcarpathian and Lublin Voivodeships with no hope for any peaceful resolution; Operation Vistula brought an end to the hostilities.
A partisan is a member of a domestic irregular military force formed to oppose control of an area by a foreign power or by an army of occupation by some kind of insurgent activity.
Roman-Taras Yosypovych Shukhevych was a Ukrainian nationalist and a military leader of the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which during the Second World War fought against the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent against the Nazi Germany for Ukrainian independence. He collaborated with the Nazis from February 1941 to December 1942 as commanding officer of the Nachtigall Battalion in early 1941, and as a Hauptmann of the German Schutzmannschaft 201 auxiliary police battalion in late 1941 and 1942.
The 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS , commonly referred to as the Galicia Division, was a World War II infantry division of the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the German Nazi Party, made up predominantly of volunteers with a Ukrainian ethnic background from the area of Galicia, later also with some Slovaks.
Ukrainian collaboration with Nazi Germany took place during the occupation of Poland and the Ukrainian SSR, USSR, by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
The Huta Pieniacka massacre was a mass murder of the Polish inhabitants of the village Huta Pieniacka, located in modern-day Ukraine, which took place on February 28, 1944. Estimates of the number of victims range from 500 to 600-800 to 1,200.
Sluzhba Bezpeky or SB OUN, was the Ukrainian partisan underground intelligence service, and a division of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists responsible for clandestine operations and anti-espionage during World War II. In its short history, the SB committed acts of terror against civilians and non-civilians and their families, including people suspected either of collaborating, or serving with the Soviet forces in western Ukraine. In this capacity, the SB also played a significant role in the ethnic cleansing and killing of the Polish population in Volhynia and Galicia.
Dmytro Semenovych Klyachkivsky, also known by the pseudonyms of Klym Savur, Okhrim, and Bilash, was a commander of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the first head-commander of UPA-North. He was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Poles from Volhynia.
Zawadka Morochowska is a former village in the administrative district of Gmina Komańcza, within Sanok County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland, close to the border with Slovakia. It was approximately 16 kilometres (10 mi) north-east of Komańcza, 15 km (9 mi) south of Bukowsko, and 75 km (47 mi) south of the regional capital Rzeszów.
The Korosciatyn massacre took place on the night of February 28/29, 1944, during the province-wide wave of massacres of Poles in Volhynia in World War II. Korosciatyn, which now bears the name of Krynica and is located in western Ukraine, was one of the biggest ethnic Polish villages of the interwar Poland's within Buczacz County in Tarnopol Voivodeship (pictured). Located along the railway line from Tarnopol to Stanislawów, in 1939 it had some 900 inhabitants, all of them being ethnic Poles.
The Podkamień massacre or the Pidkamin massacre of 12 March 1944 was the massacre of Polish civilians committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) under the command of Maksym Skorupsky (Maks). The victims were ethnic Polish residents of Podkamień, Tarnopol Voivodeship. During the war the area was administratively part of the Nazi German Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Estimates of victims include 150, more than 250 and up to 1000.
The Parośla I massacre was committed during World War II by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) under the command of Hryhorij Perehijniak "Dowbeszka-Korobka" on 9 February 1943 against the ethnic Polish residents of the village of Parośla in the Nazi-controlled Reichskommissariat Ukraine. It is considered a prelude to the ethnic cleansing of Poles in the Volhynia region by the UPA, and is recognized as the first mass murder committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the area. Estimates of the number of victims range from 149 to 173.
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 both organizations, which had previously often fought each other, but they decided to co-operate in the face of the common threat from the Polish communists and the Soviet NKVD.
The Wiązownica massacre occurred on 17 April 1945 in the village Wiązownica, located in Jarosław County Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in southeastern Poland, then located in Lwów Voivodeship. It was one of the Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, and was perpetrated by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The massacre occurred during a battle fought between the UPA and, initially, local Polish partisans, and, later, the Polish People's Army (LWP), towards the outskirts of Wiązownica. It saw the deaths of 91 civilians, including 20 women and children, alongside four LWP soldiers. The UPA also burned down 150 houses. In retaliation for the attack, the LWP led an attack on the village Piskorowice, given its large concentration of Ukrainians sympathetic for OUN.
The anti-Soviet resistance by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a guerrilla war waged by Ukrainian nationalist partisan formations against the Soviet Union in the western regions of the Ukrainian SSR and southwestern regions of the Byelorussian SSR, during and after World War II. With the Red Army forces successful counteroffensive against the Nazi Germany and their invasion into western Ukraine in July 1944, UPA resisted the Red Army's advancement with full-scale guerrilla war, holding up 200,000 Soviet soldiers, particularly in the countryside, and was supplying intelligence to the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst (SD) security service.
The Polish–Ukrainian conflict was a series of armed clashes between the Ukrainian guerrillas and Polish underground armed units during and after World War II, namely between 1939 and 1945, whose direct continuation was the struggle of the Ukrainian underground against the Polish People’s Army until 1947, with periodic participation of the Soviet partisan units and even the regular Red Army, as well as the Romanian, Hungarian, German and Czechoslovak armed formations. The fighting initially took place in the south-east areas of the Second Polish Republic occupied by the Third Reich and later in the Rzeszów Voivodeship, south-east parts of the Lublin Voivodeship of the Polish People’s Republic and in the west areas of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. There was also sporadic activity in the Romanian-occupied territories.
