To continue his party work and to protect his wife Ochab then decided to move into the territories controlled by the Soviet Union. He had met "thousands of comrades" (although many perished in Stalin's purges), was thoroughly familiar with the situation on the Polish Left and was ready to get engaged in the rebuilding of the Polish revolutionary movement. With others who shared their point of view, the Ochabs on 2 October embarked on a trip to Siedlce, and from there went to Lwów. In the Soviet Union Ochab lived and worked in Lviv until June 1941. He organized there a small circle of Polish communist sympathizers, but in June approached the Soviet authorities declaring readiness to return to Nazi-occupied Poland for conspiratorial work. However, Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Ochab volunteered for the Red Army and was assigned to an auxiliary unit. In winter his health problems reappeared and caused him to return to civilian work in the Polish section of a Soviet foreign language publishing institute. In May 1943 the enterprise was moved to Moscow. Ochab became active in the newly formed Union of Polish Patriots there, leading its administrative-economic department. As the pro-Soviet and communist controlled Polish armed forces were being formed in the Soviet Union, in June 1943 Ochab joined the 1st Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division and was enlisted as a political officer with the rank of second lieutenant. In October 1943 he fought valiantly in the Battle of Lenino, for which he was decorated with both the Polish and Soviet medals for valor. In the summer of 1944 Lieutenant Colonel Ochab was already a member of the Central Committee of the Polish Workers' Party. Party and state official 1944–56 In July 1944 in Lublin Ochab became an official plenipotentiary of the command of the First Polish Army. In September he was promoted to the post of the Army's deputy commander for political affairs. He claimed having participated in the military struggle for Warsaw and in the drive to push across the Vistula at that time. In November Ochab was discharged from the army and directed to work for the Polish Committee of National Liberation, the nascent communist government, where he became deputy chief of the Public Administration Department. From the beginning of 1945 the PKWN was turned into the Provisional Government and Ochab was an undersecretary in the Ministry of Public Administration, advancing in April