Karol Wacław Świerczewski was a Polish and Soviet Red Army general and statesman. He was a Bolshevik Party member during the Russian Civil War and a Soviet officer in the wars fought abroad by the Soviet Union including the one against Polish as well as Ukrainian Republics and in Republican Spain. In 1939 he participated in the Soviet invasion of Poland again. At the end of World War II in Europe he was installed as one of leaders of the Soviet-sponsored Polish Provisional Government of National Unity. Soon later, Świerczewski died in a country-road ambush shot by the militants from OUN-UPA. He was an icon of communist propaganda for the following several decades.
Karol Świerczewski in 1946.
Michał Rola-Żymierski, Marian Spychalski and Karol Świerczewski (from left to right)
Świerczewski's monument near his place of death, in Bieszczady mountains. It has since been demolished.
Academic conference on Karol Wacław Świerczewski in Stężnica in Gmina Baligród
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army was a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary and partisan formation founded by the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists on 14 October 1942. During World War II, it was engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Soviet Union, and both the Polish Underground State and Communist Poland.
UPA propaganda poster. The OUN/UPA's formal greeting is written in Ukrainian on two of horizontal lines Glory to Ukraine – Glory to (her) Heroes. The soldier is standing on the banners of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
World War II-era monument in memory of UPA fighters with inscription "Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!", in place of the Janowa Dolina massacre, Bazaltove, Ukraine
UPA Commanders left to right: Oleksander Stepchuk, Ivan Klimchak, Nikon Semeniuk 1941–1942
Ukrainian Auxiliary Police battalion photographed in 1942