The Borderline. Hrubieszów Operation

Two warriors of the guerrilla movements, the one from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the other from the Polish Home Army (AK), narrate on the atrocities of German and Soviet occupation in 1939-1946 and argue about the mutual harms of the past. They both stood up against the Nazis, they both confronted the communists, and they both fought against each other, especially in Volyn and Helm lands. It was at the end of World War II that they did realize the Polish-Ukrainian feud was only to the advantage of the powerful leaders of the world, first Hitler, and then Stalin. The story of two partisans embodies two nations relations that evolved from hatred into mutual understanding and unity in the fight against the common enemy, the ruthless communist empire. The collaboration between the UPA and the AK is unique, profound, and symbolic; it emerged literally on the ashes that covered the Ukrainian-Polish border, the land where the WWII marched back and forth, the land where German and Soviet secret services exterminated thousands of innocent people, the land where the advancing Soviets instituted and legalized their own puppet Polish government in 1944 as an alternative to the official one based in London, the land where communists organized a horrible deportation in 1944-1946 and called it "a population exchange between Poland and Ukraine", and the land where, after all, the line between the Ukrainian and the Polish nations was virtually blurred. Under the command of UPA commander Yevhen Shtendera the UPA - WiN (former AK) joint forces undertook their most significant operation attacking the communist-controlled Polish city of Hrubieszów on the night of 27th of May, 1946.