Pilecki – an Auschwitz Volunteer

The man who revealed the truth about Auschwitz to the world... but the world did not want to hear it for a long time

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This year marks the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the site of the execution of over 1.1 million people, mostly Jews.

On January 27, 1945, soldiers of the Red Army's 1st Ukrainian Front opened the gates of the camp, freeing some 7,000 emaciated prisoners. The inscription above the gate mockingly read: Arbeit Macht Frei ("Work makes you free"). After more than four years of unimaginable terror, only a few survivors regained freedom.

The main gate of Auschwitz was built by Polish political prisoners on the orders of the Germans (Source: Wikipedia)

The Auschwitz camp was established by the Germans in 1940 in Oświęcim, in southern occupied Poland. Initially intended for Polish political prisoners, it quickly became the largest Nazi extermination camp, where European Jews were mass murdered. The name Auschwitz became a symbol of the Holocaust and genocide.

In the first months of the camp's existence, information about its actual purpose was scarce. The situation changed when one man volunteered to explore the place from the inside.

To the guards and fellow prisoners, he was Tomasz Serafiński, prisoner number 4859. His real name was Witold Pilecki – a cavalryman, captain of the Polish Army, who fought during the war with the Bolsheviks in 1921, including in the Battle of Warsaw, participated in the defensive war of 1939, and was also an active intelligence agent, a husband, and the father of two children.

Pilecki was one of the founders of a resistance organization called the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP). When TAP received information about the new camp at Auschwitz, discussions began about sending someone there to find out what was going on. Pilecki agreed to take on the task. At that time, no one at TAP knew what Auschwitz was. The first telegrams reporting the deaths of people deported in the Warsaw transport had only just begun to arrive and were treated with disbelief.

Pilecki's plan to get to the camp was realized on September 19, 1940. Then, he deliberately found himself in the apartment of his cousin Eleonora Ostrowska at Aleja Wojska Polskiego 40, in the Warsaw district of Żoliborz, during a German raid and used the Jewish identity of a Polish soldier to make sure to be arrested.

Three days later, on the night of September 21-22, 1940, he entered the camp with the so-called "second Warsaw transport," and was led through a gate marked Arbeit Macht Frei. For the next two and a half years, he observed and sent evidence to warn the world about its activities—all while subjected to the same hard labor, hunger, and mortal risk as any other prisoner.

He prepared reports that were smuggled out of the camp, containing information about the living conditions, torture and death of prisoners. At the same time, he inspired a resistance movement that sabotaged camp installations, carried out attacks on SS men and organized the smuggling of food and medicine.

In his reports, Pilecki exposed the true reality of Auschwitz and appealed to Allied forces to attack the camp. Although the documents reached some top commanders, most were ignored. Even on the day of the camp's final liberation, the Soviet-led Ukrainian army discovered its existence by accident, after liberating nearby Krakow.

Although Captain Pilecki's reports did not lead directly to the liberation of Auschwitz, they became the first and most accurate testimony to the terrible reality that reigned behind the barbed wire of the German extermination camp. He was the first to risk his life to bring the news of the torture and martyrdom of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims to the world, long before the Allied commanders officially recognized the existence of the German death factories. Two long years passed after his daring escape before the liberating armies reached the gates of Auschwitz. By that time, out of over a million imprisoned people, only seven thousand had regained freedom.

After escaping from Auschwitz with two fellow prisoners on Easter 1943, Pilecki included all of his intelligence work in the so-called Pilecki Reports. In total, he wrote three reports summarizing the underground activities in Auschwitz and the conditions in the camp. Earlier reports from the camp and the complete reports were also passed on to the Western Allies via the Home Army — but to no avail.

In 1943–1944 he served in the unit of the 3rd Kedyw of the Home Army Headquarters (including, as deputy commander of the Information and Intelligence Brigade "Kameleon," nicknamed "Jeż" [Hedgehog]), and also took part in the Warsaw Uprising. Initially, he fought as an ordinary rifleman, later commanding one of the units of the "Chrobry II" Group in Wola district of Warsaw — this area was called "Witold's Redoubt" as it was one of the areas held by the insurgents the longest.

Witold Pilecki, still a second lieutenant (Source: Quora)

After the fall of the uprising, in the years 1944–1945, Pilecki again found himself in German captivity, in Stalag 344 Lamsdorf (Polish Łambinowice), and Oflag VII A in Murnau. After the camp was liberated by the Allies, on the orders of the Polish military command in exile, he returned to Warsaw to continue the fight for independence, collecting information about the situation in Poland under Soviet occupation.

Pilecki – today referred to as “the man who volunteered for Auschwitz” – remained a forgotten figure for years. Although the war ended, Poland found itself in a new captivity, this time by the Soviets. The fight for independence did not cease, and Pilecki, together with his comrades from the underground, continued to resist the communist regime. Unfortunately, the captain’s uncompromising attitude and steadfastness sealed his tragic fate. In May 1947, he was arrested by the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic, tortured and tormented in an inhumane way. During his last, as it turned out later, visit of his wife, Pilecki confessed to her in this context: Auschwitz was but a trifle.

Forced to sign false statements, in a shameful show trial, which was against the law at the time, he was sentenced to death. The execution was carried out secretly in the prison on Rakowiecka street on May 25, 1948. The place of his burial is unknown to this day.

Apart from his cousin, the family had little knowledge of his military activities. “The requirements of the underground were such that, for both our father’s safety and ours, the less we knew, the better,” said Pilecki’s daughter, Zofia Pilecka-Optułowicz. When Zofia and her brother Andrzej listened to the radio broadcasts of Pilecki’s trial and execution, they grew up believing that their father was a traitor and an enemy of the state. It was not until the 1990s that they learned that he had been a hero all along. Until 1989, all information related to Witold Pilecki’s life and accomplishments was subject to censorship in the Polish People’s Republic.

Soviet communism fell in Poland in 1989, and Pilecki's true story could finally be told. The full text of Pilecki's reports was first published in Poland in 2000 — 55 years after the war. Previously, they had been unknown to both Polish academics and the citizens of the Polish People's Republic. It was only then that books about him began to appear, streets were named after him, and his fate began to be taught in Polish schools.

The Pilecki Institute was established, with the aim of researching the political history of Poland in the 20th century and honoring those who helped Polish citizens in difficult times. Pilecki's story also became part of the exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum.




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