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| Witold Pilecki | |
|---|---|
| In Auschwitz | |
| Born | May 13, 1901 Olonets , Karelia, Russia |
| Died | May 25, 1948 Warsaw, Poland
|
Witold Pilecki was born on May 13, 1901 in Olonets , at the shores of LadogaSee: Lake Ladoga: (Russian: the Ladoga lake, in Leningradskaja Oblast, Russia Staraja Ladoga: (Russian: A town in Leningradskaja Oblast, Russia, the first Russian capital Ladoga, Indiana: A town located in Montgomery County, Indiana, USA. lake in Karelia, to where his family was resettled after the January Uprising. In 1910 he moved with his family to Wilno, where Pilecki finished primary trading school and joined the secret scouting. In 1916 he moved to Orel, where he founded a secret scouting group.
In 1918 he joined self-defence units in the Wilno area, and took part in gathering weapons from the withdrawing German troops. In 1919 his unit was overrun by the Bolsheviks and became a partisan unit fighting behind the enemy lines. Later he joined regular Polish Army and fought in the defence of Grodno. Before the Battle of Warsaw, on August 5, 1920 he joined the 211th Uhlans Regiment and fought with it in the battles of Warsaw, Puszcza Rudnicka and took part in the liberation of Wilno. For his bravery he received the Krzyz Walecznych medal twice.
After the war he passed his exams in Wilno and was demobilized as a cavalry ensign. In the interbellum he was working on his family farm.
Before the World War II Pilecki was mobilized on August 26, 1939 and joined the 19th Polish Infantry Division of the Prusy Army as a cavalry platoon commanding officer. His unit took part in heavy fighting against the advancing Germans, and was partially destroyed. Pilecki's platoon withdrew towards Lwów and was incorporated in the recently-formed 41st Polish Infantry Division . In the course of the September Campaign Pilecki and his men destroyed 7 German tanks and shot down two aeroplanes. After the Soviet Union entered the war against Poland, his division was disbanded and Pilecki together with his commander, major Jan Wlodarkiewicz returned to Warsaw.
On November 9, 1939 they founded the Tajna Armia Polska (TAP, Polish Secret Army), one of the first underground organizations in Poland. Pilecki became the organizational commander and expanded TAP to include not only the city of Warsaw, but also Siedlce, Radom, Lublin and other main cities of Central Poland. Until 1940 TAP had approximately 8000 men (more than half of them armed), up to 20 machine guns and several anti-tank carbines. Later the organization joined the Armia Krajowa and became the core of the newly-founded Wachlarz .
In 1940 Pilecki presented his superiors with a plan of voluntarily getting to Auschwitz concentration camp and gathering information on it from the inside. Until then little was known of the German policies inside of the camp and it was considered a camp of internment or a big prison rather than a death camp. His superiors accepted the plan and presented him with false identity card with the name Tomasz Serafinski. on September 19, 1940 he was caught in a lapanka in Warsaw, together with approximately 2000 other civilians (among them Wladyslaw Bartoszewski). After two days of torture in Wehrmacht barracks, those who survived were transferred to the KL Auschwitz. Pilecki received the number 4859 on his forearm.
In Auschwitz Pilecki was working in various commandos and survived pneumonia. He also organized Zwiazek Organizacji Wojskowych (ZOW, Union of Military Organizations), the underground organization which task was to organize information networks, food distribution and prepare and train the inmates for a final uprising in case of an arms or airborne airdrop to the camp. The tasks were:
By 1941 the ZOW became numerous. Among the members were famous sculptor Xawery Dunikowski and ski champion Bronislaw Czech . The organization had its own underground court and supply lines to the outside. Thanks to the peasants living nearby the organization received regularily medical supplies. The death penalties sentenced by the court were usually carried out with German hands: the collaborators' files were swapped with those of people sentenced to death by the Germans or they were infected with typhoid by louses used by the Germans in medical experiments.
The network also provided the Polish underground with priceless information on the camp and the German policies there. Many smaller underground organizations formed in KL Auschwitz were later joined with Pilecki's ZOW. In the autumn of 1941 colonel Jan Karcz was transferred to the newly-created Birkenau death camp, where he started organizing the structures of ZOW. By spring 1942 there were more than 1000 members of the organization in most of sub-camps. The inmates constructed a radio receiver and hid it in the camp hospital. Since 1940 they were sending reports to Warsaw and London.
From October 1940 his reports constituted one of the main sources of information about Auschwitz for the Western Allies. Witold Pilecki escaped from the camp on April 27, 1943, taking with him documents stolen from the Germans. At this time he submitted a detailed report on the conditions in the camp which was forwarded via the Polish resistance to the Churchill government in London.
Pilecki was hoping that either the Western Allies will drop some arms or troops inside of a camp or the Armia Krajowa will organize an assault on the camp from the outside. However, by 1943 he understood that no such plans ever existed. In addition, the Gestapo started looking for the members of ZOW. He decided to run away from the camp. Through a camp bakery located outside of the fences Pilecki with two of his friends escaped on April 27, 1943.
On August 25 he reached Warsaw and joined the Armia Krajowa as a member of the Intelligence Department. His detailed report was sent to the British authorities in London, but they refused the Armia Krajowa plea to bomb the camp and allow the inmates to escape. Such an air raid was considered too risky and the report was consider exaggerated. Pilecki soon was promoted to cavalry captain (rotmistrz) and joined the secret organization NIE, formed inside of the Armia Krajowa.
After the Warsaw Uprising broke out, Pilecki volunteered to Chrobry II group. He fought as a simple soldier in northern city centre area, without revealing his rank. Later he revealed his true identity and became the commanding officer of the 2nd company fighting in the Towarowa and Panska streets area. His forces held the fortified area which was called the Great Bastion of Warsaw. It was one of the farthest partisan redoubts and caused great difficulties for the German supply lines. The bastion was held for two weeks in face of constant attacks by German infantry and armor. After the capitulation of the Uprising he hid some arms in a private flat and went into captivity. He spent the rest of the war in German POW camps in Lambinowice and Murnau .
After the liberation, on July 11, 1945, Pilecki joined the 2nd Polish Corps. There he was ordered to clandestinely transport large sum of money to Soviet-occupied Poland, however the action was called off. In September 1945 Pilecki was ordered by general Wladyslaw Anders to return to Poland and gather intelligence information to be sent to the west.
He returned to Poland and started to organize his intelligence net. At the same time he was working on a monography of the Auschwitz concentration camp. However, in the spring of 1946 the Polish government in exile decided that the political situation after the war left no hope for liberation of Poland and ordered that all partisans still in the forests are to either return to their normal, civilian duties or escape to the west. Pilecki declined to escape, but at the same time started to dismantle the partisan troops in Eastern Poland.
In April 1947 Pilecki started to collect evidence of Soviet and communist atrocities as well as information on expulsion of Poles (mostly members of the Armia Krajowa and the 2nd Polish Corps) to Soviet gulags. However, the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa arrested him on May 8 1947. Before the trial he was repeatedly tortured by the SB, yet he did not spill the milk. On March 3, 1948 a staged trial took place in which many probably forged documents were presented. Pilecki was accused of espionage and on May 15 together with three of his colleagues he was sentenced to death.
Important testimony against him came from future Prime Minister, Józef Cyrankiewicz, also an Auschwitz survivor. He was executed in Rakowiecka prison in Warsaw on May 25, 1948. This conviction has generally been considered to be false (based on falsified charges and set up as a part of nationwide prosecution of Armia Krajowa members and other people connected to democratic Polish government in exile) and and the prosecutor was charged in 2003 with complicity in Pilecki's murder. Cyrankiewicz has escaped any possibility of being held legally responsible through death.
It was not until October 1, 1990 when Witold Pilecki was finally rehabilitated. His place of burial was never found; it is probable that his body was buried in an unmarked grave on a rubbish dump near the Powazki Cemetery. Until 1989 information about his deeds and fate was censored and suppressed by the Polish communist regime.