The Extraordinary Life of Captain Witold Pilecki - the Auschwitz Birkenau Volunteer
There are little stories that make such an impression, like the story of Captain Pilecki's life.
It is the story of a man who decided to get into the center of a real hell of his own will, organize the surveillance net, report about the horrifying practices over there, and organize an escape with his companions.
Who exactly was he? There is a little of his early-year biography.
(Information based on: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki):
Witold Pilecki was born in Olonets, a city in Karelia, Russia's far northwestern region. He was descended from a Polish noble family with the coat of arms of Leliwa. Józef Pilecki, his grandpa, spent seven years in exile in Siberia for his role in the January Uprising (1863–1864). Witold's father, Julian Pilecki, accepted a job as a forester in Karelia after graduating from the Forest Institute in St. Petersburg, which was owing to repression against Poles in the areas annexed into the Russian Empire in the 18th century. They were unable to find occupations that matched their education. They moved to Ooniec after marrying Ludwika Osiecimska. Their five children were born there: Maria, Józef (who died at the age of five), Witold, Wanda, and Jerzy.
Witold studied at a trade school in Vilnius beginning in 1910. Before World War I, he was a member of a Russian-banned scouting club, where he acquired the fundamentals of conspiracy from his superiors and classmates. Following the commencement of World War I, the Germans began to occupy Vilnius in 1915. He relocated with his mother and brothers to his uncle's estate in Hawryków, near Vitebsk. He continued his schooling in Orzeł shortly after he first encountered the Polish political underground, which was tied to POWs.
Around 1915, he joined the Polish Circle, which was led by Stanisław Świaniewicz. In this city, he was a deputy of the "Owls" troop of the First Orowska Scout Team.
He established his team there in 1916. Polish Scouting arose from the underground in 1917, following the February Revolution, the collapse of tsarism, and the installation of the Provisional Government.
Under these conditions, Pilecki's party seized military facilities near Orel in the spring of 1918, acquiring the uniforms and weaponry needed to break through to General Józef Dowbor-Municki's 1st Polish Corps. The operation failed, but almost all the elder scouts, including Witold Pilecki, were able to depart Orze and reach the rebuilt Poland region. Pilecki fought in the Polish self-defense forces that drove the Germans out of Vilnius on December 31, 1918.
Pilecki participated in the fighting of the Polish Self-Defense, which pushed the Germans out of Vilnius on December 31, 1918. He kept fighting in the partisan "masters' regiment" led by Jerzy Dabrowski "upaszko[6] after the Red Army arrived in Vilnius. He graduated in 1921. He did, however, maintain communication with scouts. According to the 1919 report of the Scout Headquarters in Kaunas, he was a team leader of the 8th squad named after Adam Mickiewicz in Vilnius.
He served in the Polish Army from 1918 to 1921 and battled with the Bolsheviks during the conflict. He participated in the defense of Grodno as a cavalryman. He joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment on August 5, 1920, and fought in its ranks in the Battle of Warsaw, the Battle of the Rudnicka Forest, and, as a volunteer, in Eligowski's uprising. He received the Cross of Valor twice. He was demobilized at the end of the war.
He started his studies at the University of Pozna's Faculty of Agriculture in 1922. He began his studies at the University of Stefan Batory in the same year as an outstanding student in the Faculty of Fine Arts; nevertheless, he soon ceased. He met a teacher, Maria Ostrowska, who worked at a school in a nearby town, Sukurcz, and got married in 1931.
The Pilecki family regained the Sukrzywe estate in the 1920s, together with the old Polish manor house (which was handed to them as a dowry from the Domeyko family), where Witold and Maria's son Andrzej (born 1932) and daughter Zofia (born 1933) were raised.
On July 1, 1925, he was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant of the cavalry reserve with seniority in the Polish Army.
The Pilecki family's next-door neighbor was Edwardv Śmigly-Rydz. Due to his initiative shortly before the war, according to reports, Capt. Witold Pilecki started working with the Polish Army Border Guard's Second Division's counterintelligence.
II World War
He was called up to the Polish Army in August 1939. He participated in battle on the Romanian Bridge as a platoon leader in the divisional cavalry squadron of the 19th Infantry Division of the Prussian Army following the Third Reich's attack against Poland. During the battle, the Uhlans, under his leadership, destroyed two unarmed planes and seven German tanks. His squad fought in partisan combat during its final engagements. On October 17, 1939, Pilecki disbanded his platoon and joined the underground.
Following the conclusion of the September Campaign, he traveled to Warsaw and participated in the planning of the Secret Polish Army, an unofficial group that was founded on November 9, 1939, and was led by Major Jan Wodarkiewicz. He was chosen as organizational inspector the following day and later held the positions of head of staff and chief inspector. Following the establishment of the organizational structure, Pilecki simultaneously served as the head of Department I (organizational and mobilization) and the head of the weapons division in Department IV (armaments and special services). He created a network of covert locations for documents, buried tissue paper, and weapons, one of which was in his flat. He brought in several fresh faces for the group.
The Gestapo arrested several TAP members at the beginning of 1940, among them the chief of staff, Władysław Surmacki, Tadeusz Chrocicki, and Wadyslaw Dering, head of the health department. After a brief stay at Pawiak, they were sent to the Auschwitz camp in the middle of 1940. This camp was now the center of the organization's attention as a result of intelligence information. In a conference held by the TAP management at the end of August 1940 to discuss the situation, the problem of the concentration camps set up by the Germans in occupied Poland was also brought up.
And here the most amazing story begins...
At this meeting, it was suggested that someone from the top management should be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp to speak with the organization's detainees, learn how the institution ran, and put up a resistance operation there. This effort's stated goal was to free the detainees by escape or rescue. Apart from the knowledge that it had been constructed, very little was known about the camp's conditions after nearly three months of its existence.
Captain Witold Pilecki, on his request, was delegated to fulfill that dangerous mission.
Pilecki was delivered with the second Warsaw cargo to the camp on the evening of September 21–22, 1940. He was prisoner number 4859 and the primary organizer of the scheme in the camp. Stanislaw Dubois, Xawery Dunikowski, and Bronislaw Czech were among the members of the network he founded, the ZOW (Union of Military Organizations).
For the company he founded, Pilecki established the following objectives:
· Keeping colleagues' spirits up
· passing on news from outside the camp to fellow detainees
· discreetly procuring and distributing food and clothing
· Messages are being sent beyond the fence of KL Auschwitz
· organizing of escapes for prisoners from the camp
· Prepare your own forces to take over the camp in the event of an outside invasion by partisan elements, with a simultaneous airdrop of weapons and manpower (Desant).
Witold Pilecki and his network prepared the first reports on the genocide in Auschwitz ("Pilecki's reports"), sent by the laundry commando to the command in Warsaw and by the "Anna" cell in Sweden further to the west.
These reports, because of Stanislaw's authenticity, made a devastating impression on me. I attached a YouTube link, publishing “Witold’s report” below (not for sensitive ones):
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkncD1zEKEQHgLalm8D6Dvy0bLLRTye4H&si=rIqCSLbws4EIJ6MT
The Escape
Pilecki and two other prisoners, Jan Redzej and Edward Ciesielski, escaped from the camp on the night of April 26–27, 1943. They traveled along the railway track to Soa and then to the Vistula, where they sailed on a boat they found. The priest in Alwernia provided them with food and directions. They arrived in Bochnia via the Niepoomice Forest and took refuge at the home of a family on Decka Street. They then arrived at Nowy Winicz, where Witold Pilecki discovered the actual Tomasz Serafiski.
Serafiński contacted him with National Underground Army units, to whom he presented his plan to attack the Auschwitz camp.
In the summer of 1943, the Polish Underground Army headquarters sent the 2nd Lt. to this region for an assessment of the situation. The person tasked with reading Pilecki's reports was Stefan Jasieski. The plan to attack the camp, however, was rejected by the command because it was thought that local underground troops would not be able to carry it out.
Later activity
Witold Pilecki participated in the Warsaw Uprising in 1943–1944 while serving in the Polish Underground Army Headquarters’ 3rd Kedyw unit (including as deputy commander of the Information and Intelligence Brigade “Cameleon”–“Hedgehog”).
After the uprising, he was taken under custody by Nazi Germans and imprisoned in camp 344 Lamsdorf (pol. Łambinowice), oflagu VII A w Murnau.
On May 8, 1945, Polish Underground Army generals, including acting Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, visited the liberated Murnau camp. On May 11, 1945, Polish Army Colonel Iranek affirmed the directive to wait for instructions. "Witold" was later assigned to the 2nd Polish Corps.
His commander at the time, Lt. Col. Dipl. Stanisaw Kijak, who was working to establish a national intelligence network, promoted him to the rank of officer in the 2nd Division of this unit. Pilecki spoke with General Wadysaw Anders on September 5 and 11 about going back to the nation to advance the objectives of the "NO" organization. Witold Pilecki and Maria Szelgowska arrived in Warsaw on December 8, 1945.
Post-war activity
After arriving back in Warsaw, "Witold" made an effort to recreate his extremist contacts inside the framework of "NO". He walked the streets in search of former acquaintances and tried to find out which of his old companions were still alive and where they were. As soon as it was discovered that his reliable pals from the "NIE" group were dead, the plan to rely on his former network fell apart. As a result, a new network structure based on fresh contacts had to be created.
Resigning activity, such as carrying out attacks on communist resigning leavers, was to be avoided. The group collected information about the post-war political situation in Poland and contacted partisan forest units.
Pilecki was informed in June 1946 that he had been ordered to leave the country. He did not leave the nation, however, because he did not have a deputy to whom he could delegate his duties, and his wife, Maria Pilecka, refused to leave the country with her children [30]. In 1947, he considered taking advantage of the so-called amnesty but eventually chose not to identify himself.
The Caption
On May 8, 1947, he was arrested in the apartment of Helena and Makary Sieradzki on Paska Street, where he arrived unaware of the owners' arrest the day before and the establishment of a siege (trap). A notebook with the addresses of around a hundred people who worked with "Witold" and a code were discovered beside him. While in captivity, he was tortured by Security Office agents.
During interrogation, he was brutally tortured: his fingernails were pulled out, his testicles were smashed, and he was impaled on a stool leg. Pilecki later confessed to his wife in this context during his last visit with her: “Auschwitz was a childish play”.
The Trial
· Establishing a Polish intelligence network for General Anders;
· the so-calledThe liquidation of the "MBP masterminds" involved planning an armed assault on a group of MBP dignitaries, according to the Brzeszczot Report.
· taking money from someone representing a foreign government's interests;
· arranging three weapon caches and having unauthorized access to weapons, ammo, and explosives;
· not having a District Supplement Command registration;
employing phony documents under the names of Roman Jezierski and Witold Pilecki.
The captain, Witold Pilecki, was sentenced to death on March 15, 1948. On May 3, 1948, the Supreme Military Court upheld the verdict in the second instance.
On May 25, the sentence was carried out by a shot in the back of the head in the Mokotów prison on Rakowiecka Street.
Witold Pilecki had left his wife, daughter, and son. The burial site was not established following the exhumations and study conducted in 2012, while it is assumed that it is a plot near Łączka, where UB (soviet security agency) victims were discreetly buried so that their memory would expire in Poland.
Disclaimer!
This was the end of Capitan Pilecki's life; however, it is not the end of his legend. There are a lot of controversies and rumors about his activity, and a lot of discrepant opinions are mostly connected with his political attitude.
I just wanted to write about this amazing story, that's all.
Resources:
https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki
https://biogramy.ipn.gov.pl/bio/wszystkie-biogramy/rotmistrz-witold-pileck/z-archiwum-ipn?page=1
https://teologiapolityczna.pl/raport-witolda-pileckiego-z-auschwitz-fragmenty
