Witold Pilecki

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Witold Pilecki

pre-1939 photo
Born May 13, 1901(1901-05-13),
Olonets, Karelia, Russia
Died May 25, 1948,
Warsaw, Poland

Witold Pilecki (May 13, 1901 – May 25, 1948; pronounced [ˈvitɔld piˈletski]; codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold) was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic, the founder of the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska) Polish resistance group and a member of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa).

During World War II, he became the only known person to volunteer to be imprisoned at Auschwitz concentration camp. While there, he organized the resistance movement in the camp, and as early as 1940, informed the Western Allies of Nazi Germany's Auschwitz atrocities. He escaped from the camp in 1943 and took part in the Warsaw Uprising. Pilecki was executed in 1948 by the communist secret police Urząd Bezpieczeństwa. Until 1989, information on his exploits and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime.[1][2]

Contents

[edit] Early life

Witold Pilecki was born May 13, 1901, in Olonets (Ołoniec) east 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.[3] His grandfather, Józef Pilecki, had spent seven years in exile in Siberia for his part in the rising. In 1910, Pilecki moved with his family to Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), where he completed Commercial School and joined the secret ZHP Scouts organization.[3] In 1916, he moved to Orel, Russia, where he founded a local ZHP group.[3]

During World War I, in 1918, Pilecki joined ZHP Scout section of the Polish self-defense units under General Władysław Wejtko in the Wilno area.[3] When his sector of the front was overrun by the Bolsheviks, his unit for a time conducted partisan warfare behind enemy lines. Pilecki subsequently joined the regular Polish Army and took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920, serving under Major Jerzy Dąbrowski.[3] He fought in the Polish retreat from Kiev as part of a cavalry unit defending Grodno (in present-day Belarus). On August 5, 1920, he joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the crucial Battle of Warsaw and at Rudniki Forest (Puszcza Rudnicka) and took part in the liberation of Wilno.[3] He was twice awarded the Krzyż Walecznych (Cross of Valor) for gallantry.[4]

After the Polish-Soviet War ended in 1921 with the Peace of Riga, Pilecki passed his high-school graduation exams (matura) in Wilno, and passed the exams for an NCO position in the Polish Army.[3] He also studied at the Stefan Batory University in Wilno, and rebuild his family estate, ruined during the war.[3] He then took officer training courses.[3] Assigned to cavalry regimen, in 1926, ensign, or the second lieutenant of the reserves; while in the reserves, he would subsequently actively support local paramilitary training activities.[3] In the interbellum, he worked on his family's farm in the village of Sukurcze, and was known as a social work activist and an amateur painter..[3] 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). In 1938, he received the Silver Cross of Merit, for his involvement in the community and social work.[3]

[edit] World War II

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Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, on August 26, 1939, Pilecki was mobilized as a cavalry-platoon commander. He was assigned to the the 19th Infantry Division under Józef Kwaciszewski, part of Polish Army Prusy.[3] His unit took part in heavy fighting in the Invasion of Poland against the advancing Germans and was partially destroyed.[3] 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, where he served as Division's second-in-command, under Major Jan Włodarkiewicz.[3] During that conflict (known in Poland as the September Campaign), Pilecki and his men destroyed seven German tanks and shot down two aircraft. On September 17, Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland pursuant to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Involved in more heavy fighting on two fronts, by September 22, Pilecki's division was disbanded, partially surrendering to the enemies.[3] He returned to Warsaw with his commander, Major Włodarkiewicz.[3]

On November 9, 1939, the two men founded the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP), one of the first underground organizations in Poland.[5][3] Pilecki became its organizational commander as TAP expanded to cover not only Warsaw but Siedlce, Radom, Lublin and other major cities of central Poland.[3] 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 Union for Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej), later renamed and better known as the Home Army (Armia Krajowa).[3] Within AK, TAP units became the core of the Wachlarz unit.[4]

[edit] Auschwitz

In 1940, Pilecki presented to his superiors a plan to enter 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.[5] 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."[6] On September 19, 1940, he deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup (łapanka), and was caught by the Germans along with some 2,000 innocent civilians (among them, Władysław Bartoszewski).[6] After two days of torture in Wehrmacht barracks, he was sent to Auschwitz. Pilecki was tattooed on his forearm with the number 4859.[6]

Auschwitz concentration camp photos of Pilecki (1941)

At Auschwitz, while working in various kommandos and surviving pneumonia, Pilecki organized an underground Union of Military Organizations (Związek Organizacji Wojskowej, ZOW).[3][7] Many smaller underground organizations at Auschwitz eventually merged with ZOW.[3] ZOW's tasks were to improve inmate morale, provide 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.[7][3]

ZOW provided the Polish underground with priceless information on the camp.[7] From October 1940, ZOW sent reports to Warsaw,[8] and beginning March 1941, Pilecki's reports were being forwarded via the Polish resistance to the British government in London.[9] 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. Such plans, however, were all judged impossible to carry out.[3] Meanwhile the Gestapo redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, succeeding in killing many of them.[3] 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 26/27, 1943, taking along documents stolen from the Germans.[10]

[edit] Outside the camp

After several days, he made contact with the Home Army units.[3] On August 25, 1943, Pilecki reached Warsaw and joined the Home Army's 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 in turn decided that it didn't have enough force to storm the camp by itself.[7] In 1944, the Russian 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 the camp.[11] Until he became involved in the Warsaw Uprising, Pilecki remained coordinated ZOW and AK activities, and provided what limited support he was able to offer to ZOW.[3]

On February 23 1944 Pilecki was promoted to cavalry captain (rotmistrz) and joined a secret anti-communist organization, NIE ("NO or NIEpodleglosc - independence"), formed as a secret organization within the Home Army with the goal of preparing resistance against a possible Soviet occupation.[3]

[edit] Warsaw Uprising

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944, Pilecki volunteered for the Kedyw's Chrobry II group. At first, he fought in the northern city center without revealing his actual rank, as a simple private.[3] Later, as many officers fell, he disclosed his true identity and accepted command.[3] 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 in German prisoner-of-war camps at Łambinowice and Murnau.[3]

[edit] Communist Poland

On July 9, 1945, Pilecki was liberated from the POW camp, and soon afterwards he joined the 2nd Polish Corps, which was stationed in Italy, where he wrote a monograph on Auschwitz..[3] As the relations between the Polish government in exile and the Polish-Soviet communist government worsened, in September 1945, Pilecki accepted orders from General Władysław Anders to return to Poland under a false identity and gather intelligence to be sent to the government in exile.[3]

Pilecki returned to Poland in October 1945, where he proceeded to organize his intelligence network.[3] 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. In July of 1946, Pilecki was informed that his cover was blown and ordered to leave; he declined.[3] 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.[4]

[edit] Arrest and execution

Photos of Pilecki from Warsaw's Mokotów prison (1947)

On May 8, 1947, he was arrested by the Polish security service (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa).[3] Prior to trial, he was repeatedly tortured but revealed no sensitive information and sought to protect other prisoners.[3]

On March 3, 1948, a show trial took place [12]. Testimony against him was presented by a future Polish prime minister, Józef Cyrankiewicz, himself an Auschwitz survivor. Pilecki was accused of illegal crossing of the borders, use of forged documents, not enlisting with the military, carrying illegal arms, espionage for general Władysław Anders (head of the military of the Polish Government-in-Exile) and preparing an assassination on several officials from 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 Polish Corps of whom he considered himself an officer and thus claimed that he was not breaking any laws); he pleaded guilty to the other charges. 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 Mokotów Prison on ulica Rakowiecka (Rakowiecka Street).[1]

Pilecki's conviction was part of a prosecution of Home Army members and others connected with the Polish Government-in-Exile in London. In 2003, the prosecutor, Czesław Łapiński, and several others involved in the trial were charged with complicity in Pilecki's murder. Cyrankiewicz escaped similar proceedings, having died; Łapiński has died in 2004, before the trial was concluded.[4]

After Poland regained its independence, Witold Pilecki and all others sentenced in the staged trial were rehabilitated on October 1, 1990.[4] In 1995, he received posthumously the Order of Polonia Restituta. In 2006, he received the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish decoration.[3] His place of burial has never been found. He is thought to have been buried in an unmarked grave near Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.[3]

[edit] Polish Army career summary

[edit] See also

Scouting portal

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Piekarski 1990, p. 249
  2. ^ Tchorek 2009
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am Pilecki`s life Institute of National Remembrance. Last accessed on 14 March 2009.
  4. ^ a b c d e (Polish) Detailed biography of Witold Pilecki on Whatfor. Last accessed on 21 November 2007.
  5. ^ a b Lewis 1999, p. 389
  6. ^ a b c Lewis 1999, p. 390
  7. ^ a b c d Wyman 1976, p. 1148
  8. ^ Lewis 1999, p. 393
  9. ^ Lewis 1999, p. 394
  10. ^ Lewis 1999, p. 399
  11. ^ Wyman 1976, p. 1149
  12. ^ The Times 1948

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

  • Foot, Michael Six Faces of Courage, Pen and Sword 2003 [1957], ISBN 978-0850529654
  • Ciesielski E., Wspomnienia Oświęcimskie [Auschwitz Memoirs], Kraków, 1968
  • Cyra, Adam Ochotnik do Auschwitz - Witold Pilecki 1901-1948 [Volunteer for Auschwitz], Oświęcim 2000. ISBN 8391200035
  • Cyra, Adam Spadochroniarz Urban [Paratrooper Urban], Oświęcim 2005.
  • Cyra, Adam and Wiesław Jan Wysocki, Rotmistrz Witold Pilecki, Oficyna Wydawnicza VOLUMEN, 1997. ISBN 8386857277
  • Garlinski, Jozef, Fighting Auschwitz: the Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp, Fawcett, 1975, ISBN 0449225992, reprinted by Time Life Education, 1993. ISBN 0809489252 (see also review in The Times)
  • Gawron, W. Ochotnik do Oświęcimia [Volunteer for Auschwitz], Calvarianum, Auschwitz Museum, 1992
  • Wysocki, Wiesław Jan. Rotmistrz Pilecki, Pomost, 1994. ISBN 8385209425

[edit] External links

Sister project Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Witold Pilecki
v • d • e
Scouting and Guiding Topics
Persondata
NAME Pilecki, Witold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jezierski, Roman (codename); Serafiński, Tomasz (codename); Druh (codename)
SHORT DESCRIPTION World War II concentration camp leader and resistor
DATE OF BIRTH 1901-05-13
PLACE OF BIRTH Olonets, Karelia, Russia
DATE OF DEATH 1948-05-25
PLACE OF DEATH Warsaw, Poland

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