Pilecki - a man who volountered to go to Aushwitz and back.

Witold Pilecki was born May 13, 1901, in Olonets (in Polish, Oloniec) on the shores of Lake Ladoga in Karelia, Russia, where his family had been forcibly resettled by Tsarist Russian authorities after the suppression of Poland's January Uprising of 1863-1864. His grandfather, Józef Pilecki, had spent seven years in exile in Siberia for his part in the Uprising. In 1910 Pilecki moved with his family to Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), where he completed Commercial School and joined the secret ZHP scouts organization. In 1916 he moved to Orel, Russia, where he founded a local ZHP group.

During World War I, in 1918, Pilecki joined Polish self-defense units in the Wilno area, and under General W³adyslaw Wejtka helped collect weapons and disarm retreating, demoralized German troops. Subsequently he took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920. Serving under Major Jerzy Dabrowski, he commanded a ZHP scout section. When his sector of the front was overrun by the Bolsheviks, his unit for a time conducted partisan warfare behind enemy lines. Pilecki later joined the regular Polish Army and as part of a cavalry unit fought in the defense of Grodno (in present-day Belarus). On August 5, 1920, he joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the historic Battle of Warsaw and at Rudniki Forest (Puszcza Rudnicka) and took part in the liberation of Wilno. For gallantry he was twice awarded the Krzy¿ Walecznych (Cross of Valor).

After the Polish-Soviet War ended in 1921 with the Peace of Riga, Pilecki passed his high-school graduation exams (matura) in Wilno and in 1926 was demobilized in the rank of cavalry ensign. In the interbellum he worked on his family's farm in the village of Sukurcze.

Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, on August 26, 1939, Pilecki was mobilized and joined the 19th Infantry Division of Army Prusy as a cavalry-platoon commander. His unit took part in heavy fighting in the September Campaign against the advancing Germans and was partially destroyed. Pilecki's platoon withdrew southeast toward Lwów (now Lviv, in Ukraine) and the Romanian bridgehead and was incorporated into the recently formed 41st Infantry Division. During the September Campaign, Pilecki and his men destroyed 7 German tanks and shot down two aircraft. On September 17, after the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Pilecki's division was disbanded and he returned to Warsaw with his commander, Major Jan Wlodarkiewicz.

On November 9, 1939, the two men founded the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP), one of the first underground organizations in Poland. Pilecki became its organizational commander and expanded TAP to cover not only Warsaw but Siedlce, Radom, Lublin and other major cities of central Poland. By 1940 TAP had approximately 8,000 men (more than half of them armed), some 20 machine guns and several anti-tank rifles. Later the organization was incorporated into the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and became the core of the Wachlarz unit.

In 1940 Pilecki presented to his superiors a plan to penetrate Germany's Auschwitz Concentration Camp at Oswiecim (the Polish name of the locality), gather intelligence on the camp from the inside, and organize inmate resistance. Until then little had been known about the Germans' running of 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 a false identity card in the name of "Tomasz Serafinski." On September 19, 1940, he was caught by the Germans in a Warsaw street roundup (³apanka) along with some 2,000 innocent civilians (among them, W³adys³aw Bartoszewski -later polish foreign minister in 90's). After two days of torture in Wehrmacht barracks, the survivors were sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki was tattooed on his forearm with the number 4859.

At Auschwitz, while working in various kommandos and surviving pneumonia, Pilecki organized an underground Union of Military Organizations (Zwi¹zek Organizacji Wojskowych, ZOW). ZOW's tasks were to improve inmates' morale, provide them 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.

By 1941, ZOW had grown substantially. Members included the famous Polish sculptor Xawery Dunikowski and ski champion Bronis³aw Czech, and worked in the Camp's SS Administration Office (Mrs. Rachwalowa, Capt. Rodziewicz, Mr. Olszowka, Mr. Jakubski, Mr. Miciukiewicz), the storage magazines (Mr. Czardybun) and the Sonderkommando, who burned human corpses (Mr. Szloma Dragon and Mr. Henryk Mendelbaum). The organization had its own underground court and supply lines to the outside. Thanks to civilians living nearby, the organization regularly received medical supplies. Sentences of death pronounced by the court were usually carried out with German assistance: German collaborators' files were switched with those of persons sentenced to death by the Germans, or the collaborators were infected with typhus by lice used in German medical experiments.

Gate to Auschwitz Concentration Camp (1941), with German motto: "Work liberates."ZOW provided the Polish underground priceless information on the camp and German activities there. Many smaller underground organizations at Auschwitz eventually merged with ZOW. In the autumn of 1941 Colonel Jan Karcz was transferred to the newly-created Birkenau death camp, where he proceeded to organize ZOW structures. By spring of 1942 the organization had over 1,000 members at most of the sub-camps, the membership including women, Czechs, Jews and many others. The inmates constructed a radio receiver and hid it in the camp hospital.

From October 1940 ZOW sent reports to Warsaw, and from March 1941 Pilecki's reports were being forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London. 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 the Home Army would organize an assault on it from outside. By 1943, however, he realized that no such plans existed. Meanwhile the Gestapo redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members. Pilecki decided to break out of the camp, with the hope of personally convincing Home Army leaders 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 April 26–April 27, 1943, taking along documents stolen from the Germans. In the event of capture, they were prepared to swallow cyanide to prevent the Germans learning the extent of their knowledge. After several days, with the help of local civilians, they made good their escape from the area and contacted Home Army units. Pilecki submitted another detailed report on conditions at Auschwitz.

After liberation, on July 11, 1945, Pilecki joined the 2nd Polish Corps. There he received orders to clandestinely transport a large sum of money to Soviet-occupied Poland, but the operation was called off. In September 1945 Pilecki was ordered by General Wladyslaw Anders to return to Poland and gather intelligence to be sent west.

He went back and proceeded to organize his intelligence network, while also writing a monograph on Auschwitz. In the spring of 1946, however, the Polish Government in Exile decided that the postwar political situation afforded no hope of Poland's liberation and ordered all partisans still in the forests either to return to their normal civilian lives or to escape to the west. Pilecki declined to leave, but proceeded to dismantle the partisan forces in eastern Poland.

In April 1947 he began collecting evidence on Soviet atrocities and on the prosecution of Poles (mostly members of the Home Army and the 2nd Polish Corps) and their executions or imprisonment in Soviet gulags.

On May 8, 1947, he was himself arrested by the Polish security service (Urzad Bezpieczenstwa). Prior to trial he was repeatedly tortured but revealed no sensitive information and sought to protect other prisoners. On March 3, 1948, a staged trial took place, in which many probably forged documents were admitted into evidence. Testimony against him was presented by a future Polish prime minister, Józef Cyrankiewicz, himself an Auschwitz survivor. Pilecki was accused of having spied for the Western Allies and General Anders. On May 15, with three of his comrades, he was sentenced to death. Ten days later, on May 25, 1948, he was executed at Warsaw's Mokotow Prison on ulica Rakowiecka (Rakowiecka Street).

Pilecki's symbolic gravestone at Powazki Cemetery, Warsaw. Buried here is his widow, Maria, née Ostrowska (1906–2002).Pilecki's conviction is generally thought to have been based on false charges and evidence, as part of a prosecution of Home Army members and others connected with the Polish Government in Exile in London. In 2003 the prosecutor and several others involved in the trial were charged with complicity in Pilecki's murder. Cyrankiewicz escaped similar proceedings by having died earlier.

It was only on October 1, 1990, that Witold Pilecki was rehabilitated. His place of burial has never been found; he is thought to have been buried in a rubbish dump near Warsaw's Powazki Cemetery. Until 1989 information on his exploits and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime.

Great story of the great man. Pity that similar stories are always unknown, I personally never heard about Pilecki. It is very sad that his work and this knowledge which he provided to the allies didn’t convinced them to do something with this camp.

We don't promote our history. We should watch what Jews are doing with their history and do the same with ours.

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