Zygmunt Szendzielarz (12 March 1910 – 8 February 1951) was the commander of the Polish 5th Wilno Brigade of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), nom de guerre "Łupaszka". He fought against the Red Army after the end of the Second World War. Following the Soviet takeover of Poland at the end of World War II he was arrested, accused of numerous crimes and executed in the Mokotów Prison as one of the anti-communist cursed soldiers. After the fall of communism, in 1993, Szendzielarz was rehabilitated and declared innocent of all charges. In 2007 Polish president Lech Kaczyński posthumously awarded Szendzielarz with the order of Polonia Restituta. His involvement in the Dubingiai massacre of 1944, however, remains controversial. Life Szendzielarz was born in Stryj (Austrian Partition, now Lviv Oblast, Ukraine), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and from 1919 to 1939 in Poland, into the family of a railway worker. After graduating from primary school in Lwów, he attended a biological-mathematical gymnasium in Lwów and then Stryj. After graduating, he volunteered for the Polish Army and completed Infantry Non-commissioned officer School in Ostrów Mazowiecka (1932), then Cavalry NCO School in Grudziądz. He was promoted to lieutenant and transferred to Wilno, where he assumed command of a squadron in the 4th Uhlan Regiment. World War II With his unit, he took part in the 1939 September Campaign. His unit was attached to the Wilno Cavalry Brigade under General Władysław Anders, part of the Prusy Army. After retreating from northern Poland, the forces of Gen. Anders fought their way towards the city of Lwów and the Romanian Bridgehead. However, in the area of Lublin Szendzielarz's unit was surrounded and suffered heavy losses. Soon afterwards Szendzielarz was taken prisoner of war by the Soviets, but he managed to escape to Lwów, where he lived for a short period under a false name. He tried to cross the Hungarian border to escape from Poland and reach the Polish Army being formed in France, but failed and finally moved with his family to Wilno. In Wilno, Szendzielarz started working on various posts under false names. In mid-1943 he joined the Home Army under the nom de guerre Łupaszka, after Jerzy Dąbrowski, and in August he started organizing his own partisan group in the forests surrounding the city. Soon the unit was joined by local volunteers and the remnants of a unit of Antoni Burzyński ("Kmicic"), destroyed