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Witold Pilecki
During World War II, he volunteered for a Polish resistance operation to get imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp in order to gather intelligence and escape. While in the camp, Pilecki organized a resistance movement and as early as 1941, informed the Western Allies of Nazi Germany's Auschwitz atrocities. He escaped from the camp in 1943 after nearly two and a half years of imprisonment. Pilecki took part in the Warsaw Uprising[2] in August 1944.[3] He remained loyal to the London-based Polish government-in-exile after the Soviet-backed communist takeover of Poland and was arrested in 1947 by the Stalinist secret police (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa) on charges of working for "foreign imperialism", thought to be a euphemism for MI6.[4] He was executed after a show trial in 1948. Until 1989, information about his exploits and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime.[4][5]
In 1940, Pilecki presented to his superiors a plan to enter Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp at Oświęcim (the Polish name of the locality), gather intelligence on the camp from the inside and organize inmate resistance.[14] Until then, little had been known about how the Germans ran the camp, and it was thought to be an internment camp or large prison rather than a death camp. His superiors approved the plan and provided him with a false identity card in the name of "Tomasz Serafiński".[16] On 19 September 1940, he deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup (łapanka) and was caught by the Germans, along with some 2,000 civilians (among them, Władysław Bartoszewski).[16] After two days of detention in the Light Horse Guards Barracks, where prisoners suffered beatings with rubber truncheons,[17] Pilecki was sent to Auschwitz and was assigned inmate number 4859.[16] During his time imprisonment, Pilecki was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant.
Auschwitz concentration camp photos of Pilecki (1941).
At Auschwitz, while working in various kommandos and surviving pneumonia, Pilecki organized an underground Union of Military Organizations (Związek Organizacji Wojskowej, ZOW).[10][18] Many smaller underground organizations at Auschwitz eventually merged with ZOW.[10][19] ZOW's tasks were to improve inmate morale, provide news from outside, distribute extra food and clothing to members, set up intelligence networks and train detachments to take over the camp in the event of a relief attack by the Home Army, arms airdrops or an airborne landing by the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade based in Britain.[10][18]
ZOW provided the Polish underground with invaluable information about the camp.[18] From October 1940, ZOW sent reports to Warsaw,[20] and beginning in March 1941, Pilecki's reports were being forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London.[21] In 1942, Pilecki's resistance movement was also broadcasting details on the number of arrivals and deaths in the camp and the inmates' conditions using a radio transmitter that was built by camp inmates. The secret radio station, built over seven months using smuggled parts, was broadcasting from the camp until the autumn of 1942, when it was dismantled by Pilecki's men after concerns that the Germans might discover its location because of "one of our fellow's big mouth".[17]
These reports were a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. Pilecki hoped that either the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp or that the Home Army would organize an assault on it from outside. Such plans, however, were all judged impossible to carry out.[10][19] Meanwhile, the Gestapo redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, succeeding in killing many of them.[10][22] Pilecki decided to break out of the camp with the hope of convincing Home Army leaders personally that a rescue attempt was a valid option. When he was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, he and two comrades overpowered a guard, cut the phone line and escaped on the night of 26/27 April 1943, taking with them documents stolen from the Germans.[23] |
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