They engaged in many skirmishes with the Internal Security Corps and NKVD soldiers.

About 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers of Ludowe Wojsko Polskie and the Internal Security Corps under Polish-Soviet general Stanislav Poplavsky were ordered to suppress the demonstration and during the pacification fired at the protesting civilians.

On the 24th of June, 1946, when Marian Bernaciak was returning from a meeting in Życzyn with a few of his men, he was ambushed by a squad of soldiers from the sapper's division of the Polish Army and a unit of Internal Security Corps.