Raids on communist prisons in Poland (1944–1946)

Anti-communist resistance in Poland
Part of Eastern European anti-Communist insurgencies
"Cursed soldiers" of the anti-Communist underground.
Date 1944–1946/1953 (last partisan killed in an ambush in 1963) Location Poland, Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union Result Communist victory
Belligerents
Cursed soldiers	Polish People's Republic  Soviet Union
Commanders and leaders
August Emil Fieldorf Witold Pilecki Zygmunt Szendzielarz Józef Kuraś ...and others	Bolesław Bierut Stanisław Radkiewicz Konstantin Rokossovsky Lavrentiy Beria Ivan Serov
Units involved
Freedom and Independence NIE Citizens' Home Army Peasants' Battalions National Armed Forces ...and others	Red Army NKVD SMERSH Polish People's Army Internal Security Corps ORMO Citiziens' Militia Department of Security
Strength
20,000 partisans	2,000,000 Red Army soldiers 35,000 NKVD officers 24,000 Polish soldiers and Ministry of Public Security officers
Casualties and losses
8,668 killed in fighting 79,000 arrested 5,000 executed 21,000 died in prison	12,000 1,000
10,000 civilians killed

The anti-communist resistance in Poland (1944–1953), also referred to as the Polish anti-Communist insurrection, was an armed struggle by the Polish Underground against the Soviet takeover of Poland at the end of World War II in Europe. The guerrilla warfare conducted by the resistance movement formed during the war, included an array of military attacks launched against Communist prisons, state security offices, detention facilities for political prisoners, and prison camps set up across the country by the Soviet authorities.

In January 1945, the pro-Soviet government installed in Poland by the advancing Red Army declared the Polish anti-Nazi resistance movement, principally the Armia Krajowa (Home Army), to be illegal and asked its surviving members to come out into the open, guaranteeing them freedom and safety. Many underground fighters decided to lay down their arms, but after doing so, most of them were arrested and imprisoned; thousands were tortured, executed, or deported into the Soviet Gulag System.

As a result, Armia Krajowa (AK) members quickly stopped trusting the new government, and some of them regrouped in a clandestine manner in order to oppose the new Soviet occupiers. They formed various post-AK resistance organisations, such as Wolność i Niezawisłość ("Freedom and Sovereignty"), and liberated hundreds of political prisoners. They became known as the "Cursed soldiers" of the Polish underground, and most were eventually captured or killed by the security services and special assassination squads.

On the night of 3-4 January 1944 the advancing Red Army crossed the former eastern border of the Second Polish Republic in the area of Volhynia (near the village of Rokitno). In several months, they pushed the Wehrmacht further west, reaching the line of the Vistula river on 24 July 1944. The Soviet advance stopped short of Warsaw, while the Armia Krajowa attempted to liberate the Polish capital from the Nazis ahead of the Red Army's offensive. The Warsaw Uprising by forces loyal to the Polish government-in-exile in London was crushed after 63 days.

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