Henryk Cybulski

Henryk Cybulski was born in 1910 in the village of Przebraze in the Russian province of Volhynia, which after 1918 became part of Poland. He worked as a forester, then in September 1939 the Red Army invaded Eastern Poland. Cybulski was on February 10, 1940 forcibly deported by the Soviets to Siberia.

In the summer of 1940 he managed to escape and, after walking for eight weeks, returned to Volhynia. As he later wrote, his sports experiences in long-distance running were a great help. Upon coming back, he took up several menial jobs, trying to lie low and not to attract attention of Soviet authorities.

In August of 1942, Cybulski joined the Home Army. In early Spring of 1943, at the beginning of Massacres of Poles in Volhynia, he became one of commandants of the Przebraże Defence, together with Ludwik Malinowski. Under his leadership, Polish resistance groups reorganized into a 500-man strong brigade, including a cavalry unit. Przebraze became a fortress, in which up to 25 000 people lived. Cybulski was a very daring commandant; together with his soldiers he fought off Ukrainian attacks on Przebraze and in the second half of 1943, initiated several raids on Ukrainian centers, including an attack on UPA’s military college in Troscianiec. Cybulski was actively cooperating with Soviet partisan forces present in Volhynia; when the Red Army entered into Volhynia, he joined a Soviet unit, but soon left it, finding out that NKVD was going to arrest him.

His afterwar whereabouts remain unknown. In 1969 Cybulski issued a book Czerwone noce (“Red nights”), worked out by Henryk Pająk, based on his memoirs, in which he described Ukrainian massacres of Poles in the early 1940s Volhynia. The book was very popular and it had several reprints. The date of his death is unknown.

This article incorporates text translated from the corresponding Polish Wikipedia article