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Witold Pilecki

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Historical figures

          Witold Pilecki
      (photo from Auschwitz)
   Born May 13, 1901,
        Olonets, Karelia, Russia.
   Died May 25, 1948,
        Warsaw, Poland.

   Witold Pilecki ( May 13, 1901 – May 25, 1948; pronounced ['vitɔld
   pi'leʦki]; codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold)
   was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic, founder of the resistance
   movement Secret Polish Army ( Tajna Armia Polska) and member of the
   Home Army (Armia Krajowa). During World War II he was the only known
   person to volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
   While there, he organized inmate resistance, and as early as 1940
   informed the Western Allies of Nazi Germany's camp atrocities. He
   escaped from Auschwitz in 1943 and took part in the Warsaw Uprising
   (August–October 1944). Pilecki was executed in 1948 by communist
   authorities.

Biography

Pilecki's early life

                                                      This article is part
                                                            of the series:
                                                       Polish Secret State

                                   Kotwica
                              History of Poland

   Witold Pilecki was born May 13, 1901, in Olonets 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 Władysław Wejtka helped collect
   weapons and disarm retreating, demoralized German troops in what became
   the prelude to Operation Wilno. Subsequently he took part in the
   Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920. Serving under Major Jerzy Dąbrowski, 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
   during Polish retreat from Kiev 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 Krzyż
   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.
   On April 7, 1931, he married Maria Pilecka (1906 – February 6, 2002),
   née Ostrowska. They had two children, born in Wilno: Andrzej ( January
   16, 1932) and Zofia ( March 14, 1933).

World War II breaks out

   Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, on August 26, 1939,
   Pilecki was mobilized and joined the 19th Polish Infantry Division of
   Army Prusy as a cavalry-platoon commander. His unit took part in heavy
   fighting in the Invasion of Poland fighting against the advancing
   Germans and was partially destroyed. Pilecki's platoon withdrew
   southeast toward Lwów (now L'viv, 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 Włodarkiewicz.

   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.

The Auschwitz campaign: 945 days

   In 1940 Pilecki presented to his superiors a plan to penetrate
   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. 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
   Serafiński." On September 19, 1940, he deliberately went out on a
   street in a Warsaw street roundup ( łapanka), and was caught by the
   Germans along with some 2,000 innocent civilians (among them, Władysław
   Bartoszewski). 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 ( Związek 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 Bronisław 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, which 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.

   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 and people of other nationalities. 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, suceeding in killing many
   members of the organizations. 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.

Back outside Auschwitz: the Warsaw Uprising.

   On August 25, 1943, Pilecki reached Warsaw and joined the Home Army as
   a member of its intelligence department. The Home Army, after losing
   several operatives in reconnoitering the vicinity of the camp,
   including the Cichociemny commando Stefan Jasieński, decided that it
   lacked sufficient strength to capture the camp without Allied help.
   Pilecki's detailed report (Raport Witolda—"Witold's Report") was sent
   to London. The British authorities refused the Home Army air support
   for an operation to help the inmates escape. An air raid was considered
   too risky, and Home Army reports on Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz were
   deemed to be gross exaggerations (Pilecki wrote: "During the first 3
   years, at Auschwitz there perished 2 million people; in the next 2
   years—3 million"). The Home Army itself in turn decided that it didn't
   have enough force to storm the camp itself.

   Pilecki was soon promoted to cavalry captain (rotmistrz) and joined a
   secret anti-communist organization, NIE ("NO"), formed as a secret
   organization within the Home Army itself with a goal to prepare
   resistance against a coming Soviet occupation.
   Polish barricade, including captured German Hetzer tank destroyer,
   during the Warsaw Uprising
   Enlarge
   Polish barricade, including captured German Hetzer tank destroyer,
   during the Warsaw Uprising

   When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944, Pilecki
   volunteered to the Kedyw's Chrobry II group. At first he fought in the
   northern city centre without revealing his actual rank, as a simple
   private. Later he disclosed his true identity and accepted command of
   the 2nd company fighting in the Towarowa and Pańska Streets area. His
   forces held a fortified area called the "Great Bastion of Warsaw". It
   was one of the most outlying partisan redoubts and caused considerable
   difficulties for German supply lines. The bastion held for two weeks in
   the face of constant attacks by German infantry and armor. On the
   capitulation of the Uprising, Pilecki hid some weapons in a private
   apartment and went into captivity. He spent the rest of the war at
   German prisoner-of-war camps at Łambinowice and Murnau.

"Liberation": Soviet-dominated Poland

   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 Władysław 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
   ( Urząd Bezpieczeństwa). 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 conviction was 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.

   After Poland regained freedom Witold Pilecki and all others sentenced
   in the mock trial were rehabilitated on October 1, 1990. In 1995 he
   received posthumously the Order of Poland Reborn. His place of burial
   has never been found; he is thought to have been buried in a rubbish
   dump near Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery. Until 1989 information on his
   exploits and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime.

Summary of Pilecki's Polish Army career

     * Ensign (podporucznik) from 1925
     * First Lieutenant (porucznik) from November 11, 1941 (promoted while
       at Auschwitz)
     * Captain (cavalry rotmistrz) from November 11, 1943

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