The story of Witold Pilecki is as tragic as it is heroic.He was born on 13 May 1901 in the town of Olonets, Karelia in the Russian Empire near the Finnish border in 1901,He was a descendant of a Polish-speaking noble family of the Leliwa coat of arms. His ancestors had been deported to Russia from their home in Lithuania for participating in the January 1863–64 Uprising, for which a major part of their estate was confiscated. Witold was one of five children of forest inspector Julian Pilecki and Ludwika Osiecimska.
In 1910, Witold moved with his mother and siblings to Vilnius,to attend a Polish school there,while his father remained in Olonets.In Vilnius, Pilecki attended a local school and joined the underground Polish Scouting and Guiding Association (Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego, ZHP).
Following the outbreak of World War I,in 1916 Pilecki was sent by his mother to a school in the Russian city of Oryol,located safer in the East than Vilnius. There he attended a gymnasium (secondary school) and founded a local chapter of the ZHP.
In 1918, following the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I,Pilecki returned to Vilnius,then outside the control of the Polish government, and joined the ZHP section of the Self-Defence of Lithuania and Belarus,a paramilitary formation under Major General Władysław Wejtko.The militia disarmed the passing German troops and took up positions to defend the city from a looming attack by the Soviet Red Army.After Vilnius fell to Bolshevik forces on 5 January 1919,Pilecki and his unit resorted to partisan warfare behind Soviet lines.He and his comrades then retreated to Białystok,where Pilecki enlisted as a szeregowy (private) in Poland's newly-established Army.He fought in the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1920,serving under Captain Jerzy Dąbrowski and being involved in the Vilna offensive.He fought in the Kiev offensive (1920) and as part of a cavalry unit defending the then-Polish city of Grodno on 5 August 1920,Pilecki joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the crucial Battle of Warsaw and then in the Rūdninkai Forest.Pilecki later was involved in the Polish–Lithuanian War as a member of the October 1920 Żeligowski's Mutiny where Polish troops occupied Vilnius in a false-flag operation.
By the conclusion of Polish-Soviet War in March 1921,Pilecki was promoted to the rank of plutonowy (corporal),becoming a non-commissioned officer. Shortly afterward,Pilecki was transferred to the army reserves,completing courses required for a non-commissioned officer rank at the Cavalry Reserve Officers' Training School in Grudziądz.He went on to complete his secondary education (matura) later that same year.He briefly enrolled with the Faculty of Fine Arts at Stefan Batory University but was forced to abandon his studies in 1924 due to both financial issues and the declining health of his father.In July 1925,Pilecki was assigned to the 26th Lancer Regiment with the rank of Chorąży (ensign).Pilecki would be promoted to podporucznik (second lieutenant,with seniority from 1923) the following year.Also in September 1926,Pilecki became the owner of his family's ancestral estate,Sukurcze,in the Lida District of the Nowogródek Voivodeship.In 1931,he married Maria Ostrowska.They had two children,born in Vilnius over the next two years: Andrzej and Zofia.Pilecki actively supported the local farming community.He was also an amateur poet and painter.He organized the Krakus Military Horsemen Training program in 1932 and was appointed to command the 1st Lida Military Training Squadron,which in 1937 was placed under the Polish 19th Infantry Division. In 1938,Pilecki received the Silver Cross of Merit for his activities.
With Polish–German tensions growing in mid-1939,Pilecki was mobilized as a cavalry platoon commander on 26 August 1939.He was assigned to the 19th Infantry Division under Major General Józef Kwaciszewski,part of the Army Prusy and his unit took part in heavy fighting against the advancing Germans during the invasion of Poland.The 19th Division was almost completely destroyed following a clash with the German forces on the night of 5/6 September at the Battle of Piotrków Trybunalski.Its remains were incorporated into the 41st Infantry Division,which was withdrawn to the southeast toward Lwów and the Romanian bridgehead.In the 41st Division, Pilecki served as divisional second-in-command of its cavalry detachment,under Major Jan Włodarkiewicz.He and his men destroyed seven German tanks,shot down one aircraft,and destroyed two more on the ground.On 17 September,the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland,which worsened the already desperate situation of the Polish forces.On 22 September, the 41st Division suffered a major defeat and capitulated.Włodarkiewicz and Pilecki were among the many soldiers who did not follow the order of Commander-in-Chief General Edward Śmigły-Rydz to retreat through Romania to France,instead opting to stay underground in Poland.
On 9 November 1939 in Warsaw, Major Włodarkiewicz,Second Lieutenant Pilecki, Second Lieutenant Jerzy Maringe,Jerzy Skoczyński, and brothers Jan and Stanisław Dangel founded the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP),one of the first underground organizations in Poland,one of their tasks was to get inside knowledge about German prisoner of war camps,and one camp in particular,in the small town of Oswiecim,Auschwitz in German,where many Poles simply disappeared.It was suspected that they were sent to Germany as forced labour,but no one knew for sure.Włodarkiewicz became its leader,while Pilecki became TAP's organizational head as it expanded to cover Warsaw, Siedlce,Radom,Lublin, and other major cities in central Poland.As cover,Pilecki worked as manager of a cosmetics storehouse.From 25 November 1939 until May 1940, he was TAP's inspector and chief of staff. From August 1940, he headed its 1st branch (organization and mobilization).
TAP was based on Christian ideological values.While Pilecki wanted to avert a religious mission so as not to alienate potential allies, Włodarkiewicz blamed Poland's defeat on its failure to create a Catholic nation and wanted to remake the country by appealing to right-wing groups.In the spring of 1940,Pilecki saw that Włodarkiewicz's views had become more anti-semitic and that he had put ultranationalist dogma into their newsletter,Znak;Włodarkiewicz had also entered into talks about a merger with the far-right underground,including a group that had offered Nazi Germany a Polish puppet government.To stop him,Pilecki went to Colonel Stefan Rowecki,chief of a rival resistance group,the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, ZWZ),which called for equal rights for Jews,gathered intelligence on German atrocities,and delivered it by courier to the Western Allies in an attempt to gain their involvement.The ZWZ had alerted the Polish Government-in-Exile that the Germans were inciting Polish hatred against the Jews, and that this might lead to the rise of a Polish Quisling.
Pilecki called for TAP to submit to Rowecki's authority, but Włodarkiewicz refused and issued a manifesto that the future Poland had to be Christian,based on national identity,and that those who opposed the idea should be"removed from our lands".Pilecki refused to swear the proposed oath.In August,Włodarkiewicz announced at a TAP meeting that they would,after all,join the mainstream underground with Rowecki – and that it has been proposed that Pilecki should infiltrate the Auschwitz concentration camp.Little was known about how the Germans ran the then-new camp,which was thought to be an internment camp or large prison rather than a death camp.Włodarkiewicz said it was not an order but an invitation to volunteer, though Pilecki saw it as a punishment for refusing to back Włodarkiewicz's ideology. Nevertheless he agreed, which years later led to him being described in many sources as having volunteered to infiltrate Auschwitz.
Pilecki was one of 2,000 men arrested on 19 September 1940. He used the identity documents of Tomasz Serafiński, who had been mistakenly assumed to be dead.Two backstories exist purporting to explain how Pilecki actually found himself in Auschwitz. In one version, he allowed himself to be captured by the occupying Germans SS in one of their Warsaw street round-ups, in order to infiltrate the camp.In the second version, he did that in the apartment of Eleonora Ostrowska, at ulica Wojska Polskiego(Polish Army Street)during a building search.In both case,the next day he was herded alongside other Poles into trucks at the Warsaw train station. All day they drove east,the men pressed together without food or water,along with 1,705 other prisoners, between 21 and 22 September 1940,Pilecki reached Auschwitz where,under Serafiński's name,he was assigned prisoner number 4859.In autumn of 1941 he learnt that he had been promoted to porucznik(first lieutenant)by people"far away in the outside world in Warsaw".
Most of this part of his story is told directly from the source material, from Pilecki's personal report about his experiences in the camp.
Arriving at the camp, Pilecki and the crowd of men were driven forward by brutal beatings from the guards. Some men were pulled out of the group at random, unprovoked, and shot in the head to break any thoughts of resistance. Accompanied by the laughter of the guards, they were then pushed on past the barbed wire and towards the parade ground, where a group of men in striped clothes was waiting for them. These men jumped the newcomers with fists and clubs – some were beaten to death. The men in the striped clothes asked them questions about their background and jobs, and those who said academics or doctors were knocked to the ground. With boots kicking against their heads, their murderers proclaimed that this is the "Concentration Camp Auschwitz, my good man!"
His head shaved, Pilecki hurried out of the bathhouse, though a guardsman knocked out two of his front teeth because he did not hold the sign with his prison number between them. From now on, Pilecki was neither himself, nor Tomasz, but a number – prisoner 4859. In his paper thin blue and white striped uniform and a pair of ill-fitting wooden shoes, he found himself on the parade ground once again. There, he encountered the murderous men again. They were called "Kapos", prisoner functionaries. Often German or Polish criminals, they were tasked with keeping things in line inside the camp, since the regular SS-men lived in barracks outside. Most of the Kapos were violent sadists who enjoyed brutally beating and torturing the helpless prisoners. Wearing yellow armbands with the Kapo label, they also oversaw the labour companies, to one of which Pilecki was assigned.
In that labour company it became clear that Auschwitz aimed to first exterminate the Polish intelligentsia. Prisoners with academic backgrounds who were not used to demanding physical work, or who lacked the experience and the dexterity to work in the quarries, were mercilessly beaten to death by the Kapos. Being too exhausted to lift another brick or push a wheelbarrow was also a death sentence. Every evening fewer people returned to the main camp.
Every walk to the latrines and every trip to the bathhouse was accompanied by beatings and harassment. Those who came late to morning parade or tried to hide away were hunted down, dragged to the parade ground, and either hanged or shot in front of the others.
Many tried to kill themselves, usually early in the morning before the day of torture began. If anyone tried to escape, the whole block was punished for it, standing out in the open for hours, or doing punishment sports, where men too exhausted to lift their arms fell and died under the boots of the Kapos. Often, the only time to catch your breath was when they were busy murdering another prisoner. Pilecki's good physical condition saved him from this fate, but for how long?
While in various slave labor kommandos and surviving pneumonia at Auschwitz,Pilecki set out to build his first resistance cell,an underground Military Organization Union (Związek Organizacji Wojskowej, ZOW).Its tasks were to improve the morale of the inmates,provide news from outside the camp,distribute extra food and clothing to its members,set up intelligence networks,train detachments to take over the camp in the event of a relief attack and help other members to get a job since it was clear from day one that staying in the worker groups, even well-conditioned men like Pilecki would soon die.So many of those worker prisoners did,in fact, die.that the prisoners had to build the first camp crematorium.Pilecki noted that the"camp became one big mill, which ground living people to ash.".ZOW was organized as secret cells,each of five members.Over time,many smaller underground organizations at Auschwitz eventually merged with ZOW,none of thos cells knew of the existence of the others, so in case they were captured and tortured they could not betray the whole network.
As part of his duties,Pilecki secretly drew up reports and sent them to Home Army headquarters with the help of inmates that had been released or escapees.The first dispatch,delivered in October 1940,described the camp and the ongoing extermination of inmates via starvation and brutal punishments;it was used as the basis of a Home Army report on"The terror and lawlessness of the occupiers".Further dispatches of Pilecki's were likewise smuggled out by individuals who managed to escape from Auschwitz.The reports' purpose may have been to get the Home Army command's permission for ZOW to stage an uprising to liberate the camp;however, no such response came from the Home Army.
In 1941, as more and more prisoners were brought in, the camp grew. Larger fences were needed, as well as more barbed wire and more guard towers. And as Auschwitz grew, it needed to feed itself and this opened up jobs for the older prisoners. With careful planning, Pilecki got his groups into the carpenters, the postal service and the barbers. He eventually got himself a job as a repairman for an oven inside an SS-man's house outside the camp. Upon leaving the living hell of Auschwitz, he returned to a world of lavish gardens, laughing children at play, and villagers having normal everyday conversations with one other.
Pilecki felt the questions burning inside him. What was the real world? What was the real nature of man? What was the culture of the 20th century? Since mankind had advanced so far from the barbarism of old, how was this still possible? Or was it the true face of humanity? Would the whole world look like this if the boundaries of civilization disappeared?
Each morning he and the other prisoners found themselves surprised to still be alive, their bodies thin to the bone, black and blue from the daily beatings, riddled with lice and fleas, living on a starvation diet. Only his daily mantra: "You're not giving up", helped Pilecki keep on, and he tried to inspire others to do the same. Survival was only possible through friendship and mutual help. Loners didn't last long.
Now, up until May 1941 it was possible for ordinary Poles to be released from Auschwitz, mostly by their families paying enormous sums to the Germans. Those released prisoners where another way to smuggle Pilecki's notes to the Armia Krajowa, but when the war between Germany and the Soviet Union began, this stopped. Instead, new groups began arriving to the camp. Many were now Jews, and by the end of August the first Soviet prisoners were transported to Auschwitz.
In 1942,Pilecki's resistance movement was also using a home-made radio transmitter to broadcast details on the number of arrivals and deaths in the camp and the conditions of the inmates.The secret radio station was built over seven months using smuggled parts. It broadcast 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 fellows' big mouth".The information provided by Pilecki was 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.
Pilecki reports that one day 700 officers were tightly packed into a room all day, until finally, a group of German soldiers with gas masks on threw gas containers inside. This was the first act of gassing people with Hydrogen Cyanide at Auschwitz, according to Pilecki. Soon after, on his way to work, he passed groups of naked Soviet prisoners waiting to be led into to the crematorium, where they were gassed and burned.
The Kapos were often brutal savages, but the bestiality of some of the SS guards was even worse. Pilecki tells of guard dogs trained to go for the throats of prisoners, the torture of smashing testicles with a hammer and many stories far too nightmarish and gruesome for this site.Now with his cells set up in important positions all over the camp, Pilecki was ready to start a revolt, but needed help from the outside to be successful. The prisoners were thirsty for revenge and ready for anything, since they did not fear death after everything they had endured. But even if they managed to overwhelm the guards and take the camp, they would not be able to hold it for long. Pilecki believed that the Armia Krajowa had received at least one of his messages. He had urged them to stage an attack, send in paratroopers from the free Polish army over in Britain, or drop a crate of arms onto them – something. But so far, nothing.
Without help from the outside, Pilecki's third Christmas in Auschwitz came and went, and Auschwitz was now changing. There was no longer collective punishment, no outright murder or even everyday brutality, or at least it was toned down. Auschwitz became a factory, which would now systematically murder its prisoners instead of individualistic, random killing. Not with the batons of the Kapos but with Phenol and Gas. There were three crematoriums working simultaneously, able to burn corpses within minutes.
By April 1943,he Camp Gestapo under SS-Untersturmführer Maximilian Grabner redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members,killing many of them and more and more of the surviving Poles were sent out of Auschwitz to make room for Jewish prisoners from all over Europe and the Soviet Union. This meant the end of Pilecki's network, as its members were sent to other camps. After two years and seven months of surviving in Auschwitz, Pilecki decided that to avoid the worst outcome it was time to break out, since an uprising was no longer possible.
Pilecki decided to break out of the camp with the hope of convincing Home Army leaders that a rescue attempt was a valid option.He got a night shift job at a bakery outside the camp and the night of 26–27 April 1943 during a night shift at the bakery he and two comrades managed to force open a metal door, overpower a guard, cut the telephone line,and escape outside the camp perimeter.They left the SS guards in the woodshed,barricaded from outside.Before escaping they cut an alarm wire.They headed east, and after several hours crossed into the General Government,taking with them documents stolen from the Germans.The men fled on foot ran all night and all day up to the village of Alwernia where they were helped by a priest,and then on to Tyniec where locals assisted them. Later,they reached the Polish resistance safe house near Bochnia,owned, coincidentally,by commander Tomasz Serafiński,the very man whose identity Pilecki had adopted for his cover in Auschwitz.At one point during the journey,German soldiers attempted to stop Pilecki,firing at him as he fled;several bullets passed through his clothing,while one wounded him without hitting either bones or vital organs.
After several days as a fugitive and with the help of patriotic poles he mannaged to smuggle himselef back to Warsaw and on August 23, 1943, after nearly 1,000 days in Auschwitz ,Pilecki made contact with units an comanders of the Home Army and .In June 1943,in Nowy Wiśnicz,Pilecki drafted a report on the situation in Auschwitz.It was buried at the farm where he was staying and was only revealed after his death. In August 1943,back in Warsaw, Pilecki started preparing Witold's Report (Raport W),which focused on the Auschwitz underground.It covered three main topics: ZOW and its members;Pilecki's experiences;and to a lesser extent,the extermination of prisoners, including Jews.Pilecki's intent in writing it was to persuade the Home Army to liberate the camp's prisoners. However,the Home Army command judged such an attack would fail.Even if the initial attack were successful, the resistance lacked sufficient transport capabilities,supplies,and the shelter that would be required for the rescued inmates. The Soviet Red Army,despite being within attacking distance of the camp,showed no interest in a joint effort with the Home Army and the ZOW to free it.
Shortly after rejoining the resistance,Pilecki became a member of the Kedyw sabotage unit,using the pseudonym Roman Jezierski.He also joined a secret anti-communist organization,NIE.On 19 February 1944 he was promoted to cavalry captain(rotmistrz).Until becoming involved in the Warsaw Uprising,Pilecki continued coordinating ZOW and Home Army activities and providing ZOW with what limited support he could.
In Auschwitz,Pilecki had met the author Igor Newerly,whose Jewish wife,Barbara,was hiding in Warsaw.The Newerlys had been working with Janusz Korczak to try to save Jewish lives.Pilecki gave Barbara Newerly money from the Polish resistance,which she passed on to several Jewish families whom she and her husband protected.He also gave her money to pay off her own szmalcownik, or blackmailer,who said he was Jewish and threatened to report her to the Gestapo.The blackmailer disappeared,with Jack Fairweather concluding that"it is likely that Witold arranged for his execution".
When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on 1 August 1944,Pilecki volunteered for service with Warszawianka Company of Kedyw's Chrobry II Battalion.Initially,he served as a common soldier in the northern city centre,without revealing his rank to his superiors.After many officers were killed in the early days of the uprising,Pilecki revealed his true identity and accepted command of the 1st"Warszawianka"Company deployed in Warsaw's Śródmieście(downtown)district. After the fall of the uprising, which ended on 2 October that year,he was captured and taken prisoner by the Germans. He was sent to Oflag VII-A,a prison-of-war camp for Polish officers located north of Murnau,Bavaria,where he remained until the prisoners were liberated on 29 April 1945.
In July 1945,Pilecki joined the military intelligence division of the Polish II Corps under Lieutenant General Władysław Anders in Ancona, Italy where he turned in his report about Auschwitz to the British.In October 1945,as relations between the government-in-exile and the Soviet-backed regime of Bolesław Bierut kept deteriorating,Pilecki was ordered by Anders and his intelligence chief,Lieutenant Colonel Stanisław Kijak,to return to Poland and report on the prevailing military and political situation under Soviet occupation.By December 1945 he had arrived in Warsaw and begun organizing an intelligence gathering network.As the NIE organization had been disbanded,Pilecki recruited former ZOW and TAP members and continued sending information to the government-in-exile.
To maintain his cover identity,Pilecki lived under various assumed names and changed jobs frequently.He worked as a jewellery salesman, a bottle label painter,and as the night manager of a construction warehouse,for Pilecki, Auschwitz was the symbol of the Polish struggle for existence. He himself could never go back to a normal civilian life after his experience.However,in July 1946 he was informed that his identity had been uncovered by the Ministry of Public Security.Anders ordered him to leave Poland,but Pilecki was reluctant to comply because he had a wife and children in the country and the wife was unwilling to emigrate with the children,as well as due to a lack of a suitable replacement.In early 1947 his superiors rescinded the order.
Arrested on 8 May 1947 by the communist authorities,Pilecki was tortured,but in order to protect other operatives,he did not reveal any sensitive information.His case was supervised by Colonel Roman Romkowski.A show trial,chaired by Lieutenant Colonel Jan Hryckowian,took place on 3 March 1948.Pilecki was charged with illegal border crossing,use of forged documents,not enlisting with the military,carrying illegal arms,espionage for Anders,espionage for"foreign imperialism"(government-in-exile),and planning to assassinate several officials of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland.Pilecki denied the assassination charges,as well as espionage, although he admitted to passing information to the II Corps,of which he considered himself an officer and thus claimed that he was not breaking any laws.He pleaded guilty to the other charges.He was sentenced to death on 15 May with three of his comrades.Pleas for pardon from a number of Auschwitz survivors were ignored;one of their recipients was Polish prime minister Józef Cyrankiewicz,also an Auschwitz survivor.Cyrankiewicz,who had already testified at the trial, instead wrote that Pilecki must be treated harshly as an"enemy of the state".Subsequently,on 25 May 1948,Pilecki was executed by Piotr Śmietański with a shot to the back of the head at the Mokotów Prison in Warsaw.Several of Pilecki's affiliates were also arrested and tried around the same time,with at least three executed as well;a number of others received death sentences that were changed to prison sentences,Pilecki's burial place has never been found, though it is thought to be in Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.
