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Many Greater Poland insurgents could also be found among the organisers of the structures of the Greater Poland independence underground. It is possible to report here a few examples of the patriotic and state-oriented activity of the former insurgents. Above all, it is necessary to indicate the Secret National Organisation (SNO), one of several dozens of underground organisations which operated within the occupied territories of Greater Poland. As well as officers and non-commissioned officers of the Polish Army, the founders of this group, organised in Gniezno, included former Greater Poland insurgents: Franciszek Gawrych and Maksymilian Sikorski. The latter was called up into the German army in the year 1914. Soon after demobilisation in December 1918, on 16 January 1919, he joined the insurgent troops in Miejska Górka. Later on he took part in the Polish-Bolshevik war. Then he worked, among other places, at the Infantry Cadets School in Ostrowia Mazowiecka. In 1935 he retired. In 1940 he took command of the Secret National Organisation established at the end of 1939. In 1940 the SNO became a large conspiratorial group with about 200 members from such poviats as: Gniezno, Września, Konin, Mogilno and Poznań. Despite the fact that the organisation was highly covert, in summer 1941 arrests began. In June 1942 the Gestapo captured Sikorski who was in hiding. He was imprisoned in Szamotuły, Wronki and Wrocław, and on 5 September 1942 he appeared before the Higher Regional Court in Poznań (at the Assizes in Wrocław), which sentenced him to seven years of imprisonment in a penal camp with hard labour. The basis for the accusation was the ”preparation of high treason”, that is, conspiratorial activities which were described in detail in the act of indictment and the verdict. The investigators left out Sikorski's participation in the Uprising, however, they emphasised that “after the war, he expressed his support for Poland”, which, from the point of view of the German authorities, was also a serious charge. Sikorski was sent to prisons in Germany and at the beginning of 1943 he was transported to the Mauthausen-Gusen camp where he stayed until the liberation in May 1945. After his return to Gniezno, he was the president of the Union of Former Political Prisoners of German Concentration Camps and Prisons. After being uncovered, Franciszek Gawrych was also sentenced to seven years of prison. Edmund Roliński, another important activist of the SNO also appeared before the Higher Regional Court. From December 1918 till February 1919, Roliński took part in the Greater Poland Uprising in the area of the Mogilno poviat. In 1939, he participated in the defensive war of Poland and after the defeated campaign he returned to Gniezno, where he quickly got involved in conspiratorial activities. He was arrested by the Gestapo in July 1941 and one year later – in August 1942 – he was sentenced to death for the “preparation of high treason”. In October 1942, he was decapitated in prison at Młyńska Street  in Poznań.