the partisans. The Bielski partisans' activities were aimed at the Nazis and their collaborators, such as Belarusian volunteer policemen or local inhabitants who had betrayed or killed Jews. They also conducted sabotage missions. The Nazi regime offered a reward of 100,000 Reichsmarks for assistance in the capture of Tuvia Bielski, and in 1943, led major clearing operations against all partisan groups in the area. Some of these groups suffered major casualties, but the Bielski partisans fled safely to a more remote part of the forest, and continued to offer protection to the non-combatants among their band. During the process of reorganization of the Novogrudok area of the Home Army, the Uderzeniowe Bataliony Kadrowe units created a battalion, which became part of the 77th Infantry Regiment of the Home Army, under Boleslaw Piasecki. In February 1944 the battalion had around 700 soldiers (some sources put the number at around 500). The unit took part in the Operation Tempest, fighting the Germans around Lida and Vilnius (see: Wilno Uprising), where it suffered heavy losses. The 5th Wileńska Brigade of the Home Army, commanded by Zygmunt Szendzielarz (Łupaszko), fought against the German army and SS units in the area of southern Wilno Voivodeship, but was also frequently attacked by the Soviet Partisans paradropped in the area by the Red Army. In April 1944, Zygmunt Szendzielarz was arrested by Lithuanian police and handed over to the German Gestapo. Łupaszko escaped or was released in unknown circumstances at the end of April. In reprisal actions his brigade captured several dozen German officials and sent several threatening letters to Gestapo but it remains unknown if and how these contributed to his release. On June 12, 1944, General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, Commander-in-Chief of the Home Army, issued an order to prepare a plan of liberating Vilnius from German hands. The Home Army districts of Vilnius and Novogrudok planned to take control of the city before Soviet forces could reach it. The Commander of the Home Army district in Vilnius, General Aleksander Krzyżanowski "Wilk", decided to regroup all the partisan units in the north-eastern part of Poland for the assault, both from inside the city and from the outside. On June 23, two squads of the 5th Wileńska Brigade, commanded by "Maks" and "Rakoczy", attacked the Lithuanian policemen in Dubingiai. The starting date was set to July 7. Approximately 12,500 Home Army soldiers attacked the German garrison and managed