around 10:50 am. At 11:30 am, the arms depot at the prison building was seized and the firearms distributed among the demonstrators. The crowd ransacked the Communist Party's local headquarters and then, at around 11 a.m., attacked the office of the Ministry of Public Security on Kochanowskiego Street, but were repulsed when the first shots were fired from its windows into the crowd. From then until 6:00 pm, they seized or besieged many government buildings and institutions in and around Poznań, including the district courthouse and the prosecutor's office, the radio jamming station on Dąbrowskiego Street, and police stations in Junikowo, Wilda, Swarzędz, Puszczykowo and Mosina. The prison camp in Mrowino and the military school at the Poznań University of Technology were seized and weapons taken. The police documents at the local police station, procuratorate and courthouse were destroyed. In the meantime, at about 11:00 am, 16 tanks, 2 armored personnel carriers and 30 other vehicles were sent from the Officers' School of Armored and Mechanized Formations, a Poznań garrison, to protect the designated buildings, but no shots were exchanged between them and the insurgents. These soldiers engaged in friendly conversation with the protesters; some reports state that two tanks were seized and some troops disarmed. Konstantin Rokossovsky, the Soviet general, and Poland's Defence Minister, then decided to take personal control, and the situation changed dramatically. Rokossovsky sent his deputy, the Polish-Soviet general Stanislav Poplavsky, and a group of lower Soviet officers, with orders to put down the protest in a manner consistent with Russian standards, intending to end the demonstrations as soon as possible to prevent an occurrence similar to the uprising of 1953 in East Germany, when a similar protest, not quelled in time, spread to many other regions. The Russian officers arrived at 2 p.m. at Ławica Airport and took command. Poplavsky did not bother to use local regulars from Poznań garrisons, instead taking other troops from Silesian Military District and recalling special troops from the Biedrusko military base north of Poznań. The troops were told that the protesters were led and organized by "German provocateurs", who were attempting to darken Poland's image during the ongoing Poznań International Fair. Between 4 p.m. and 5 a.m. the following day, troops from the Polish 10th Armored Division, Polish 19th Armored Division, Polish 4th Infantry Division and Polish 5th Infantry Division, totaling 10,300, and the Internal Security Corps, under the