Działania grupy operacyjnej „Hrubieszów” na terenie powiatów hrubieszowskiego i tomaszowskiego po zakończeniu akcji „Wisła”

Abstrakt

The article presents one of the little known episodes of the Polish-Ukrainian fights carried on in the 40-ties on the area of the Hrubieszów and Tomaszów districts. Large-scale dislodgement of Ukrainians to the so-called Regained “Territories” carried out within the “Wisła” scheme in the summer of 1947 and anti-guerilla operations of the Polish Army (WP), Army Security Corps (KBW) and Civic Militia (MO) accompanying it, did not result in complete suppression of the Ukrainian nationalist movement OUN-UPA that was active in the south-east part of the Lublin Province.

As it was necessary to definitely rid the region of the remains of “Berkut's” troops, the commanders of the Operation Group “Wisła”, before it was disbanded on 31 July, decided to leave two infantry regiments in the Lublin Province and together with the subordinate KBW units to form a special Operation Group “Hrubieszów”. On the basis of the experiences of the past battles between WP and UPA the commander of the Group, Brigadier-General Mieczysław Melenas, accepted an organizational model of the Group that was different from the one that was standing; it made it possible to overcome small, scattered and hiding in underground hiding-places guerilla troops. Giving up ineffective and requiring a lot of soldiers round-ups and combing out woods was a new solution in the sphere of tactics; instead, small, mobile groups of soldiers were used that made use of some elements of guerilla warfare, like surprise, ambushes, or manoeuvering during the night.

Special operations consistently carried out by the “Hrubieszów” Group made it possible to finally suppress the Ukrainian guerillas in the Tomaszów and Hrubieszów districts, although the core of the Ukrainian forces, including the commander of the 6^th District of UPA "Sian" Mirosław Onyszkiewicz as well as the headquarters of the 28^th Tactical Sector "Danyliw" and the commanders of the 3^rd District of OUN managed to escape from the area and get to the so-called “Regained Territories” or to the American Occupation Zone in Germany.

It is worth stressing the fact that although the archives of the 3^rd Infantry Division were accessible in the past years, the problem of participation of WP in suppressing UPA on the area of the Lublin Province after completing the “Wisła” scheme has not been thoroughly researched until now. Only some documents were used that fragmentarily showed the issue.