Peter O’Neill – Witold Pilecki Witold Pilecki in cavalry uniform, colourised pre-19391 Witold Pilecki – The Forgotten Polish Patriot Arguably, the world is most dangerous when it is blind. When the world decides to devote all of its attention to one place or one way of thinking, we let all sorts of horrors pass us by. It takes immense bravery and the greatest courage to survive these events, but it takes even more to volunteer to go through hell to prove and report on these events, so the world is no longer blind to them. This is the story of Witold Pilecki. Witold Pilecki served his country, his community and the world during his adventurous life, and in forty-seven years, he saw Poland rise to become a nation once again, he fought to protect her against several foes, took part in the Warsaw Uprising and volunteered to enter Auschwitz Concentration Camp in order to report on the true nature of the camp. Sadly, like so many resistance heroes in Poland and Eastern Europe, his name was erased by the Communist regime for four decades and the story of his great deeds were almost lost. His life was taken by the Communists, but his legacy would outlive their governments and the Soviet Bloc. Early Life The Pilecki’s were of old Polish Nobility, but when Witold was born in 1901, there was no Poland: only the Russian Empire under the Czar2. When Witold was sixteen years old (the same age as me) he had already joined the movement for Polish freedom. The German Empire had conquered large swaths of Poland when the Russians descended into revolution. While the Russian Civil War raged 1 Nieznany, kolor: old photos in color - T.Bór Komorowski "Armia podziemna" Warsaw 1990, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29744046 2 Encyclopedia Britannica. 2020. Tsar. 1 Peter O’Neill – Witold Pilecki between Communists and Czarists, the oppressed nations of the Empire broke free. Finland, Lithuania, the Ukraine and Poland all became nations in the 1920s, but most would be brought back into the USSR in years to follow. Poland would not bow, and Witold took up arms alongside his brothers, as the Poles managed to defeat the Soviets at the Battle of Warsaw! This left the USSR with a bloody nose, and it secured Polish freedom3, for a decade at least. With Poland safe, Witold returned to his family, got married, repaired his family home at Lida and gained his first medal, for his work for the people of Lida. But this peace would not last.4 German Troops crossing the Polish Border in a staged photo at Sopot5 The Fall of Poland In 1939, Poland’s old enemies of Germany and Russia once again attacked, and with more success than in the 1920s. Even the strongest Polish positions could not hold out for long against the combined strength of the Red Army and the German Wehrmacht. Warsaw fell on the 27th of September and Witold Pilecki’s own unit was disbanded by the 17th of October. Building off of his old underground days, Pilecki founded the Secret Polish Army with his Commander Jan Włodarkiewicz6. Poland had capitulated and even after the massacres of Polish POWs and civilians, yet large resistance movements formed to resist the German and Soviet occupiers. Witold did not always agree with his comrades in the Secert Army, notably Włodarkiewicz’s ultranationalist and religious supremacy ideals, but he still volunteered to do anything to help Poland. Witold’s Extraordinary Mission As soon as Poland was partitioned between Germany and the USSR, both countries tried to purge their zones of political and military enemies. Tens of thousands of Polish soldiers and officers were executed at massacres such as the Katyn Forest, where 22,000 lost their lives to the Soviet NKVD7. 3 Encyclopedia Britannica. 2020. Poland - The Second Republic. 4 Theholocaustexplained.org. 2020. Invasion Of Poland – The Holocaust Explained: Designed For Schools. 5 The Jewish Chronicle: Germans crossing the border at Sopot https://www.thejc.com/news/features/danzig-the-city-where-hell-began-and-ended-1.488006 6 En.wikipedia.org. 2020. Jan Włodarkiewicz. 7 Encyclopedia Britannica. 2020. NKVD | Soviet Agency. 2 Peter O’Neill – Witold Pilecki The Polish Campaign saw both dictatorships try to rid themselves of ‘undesirables’: Ethnic Poles, Communists, the disabled and the large Jewish population of Poland. A truly vicious cycle of killings continued, resistance took hold, leading to reprisals that then led to more resistance. In November 1940, the Warsaw Ghetto was created in order to separate the Jewish Population from the rest of the people of Warsaw8. In April 1940, a simple army barracks of brick and mortar was converted to a prisoner camp for political prisoners, in the small town of Auschwitz9. Very little was known about this ‘concentration’ camp as it expanded, but decrypted radio communication left the British wanting to seek out further information. They made covert contact with the Secert Polish Army and asked them to investigate Auschwitz. Witold had heard of thousands of his countrymen being sent to this camp and volunteered to gather intelligence and organise resistance within Auschwitz. At only thirty-nine years of age, Witold Pilecki, under the false-name Tomasz Serafinski, walked onto the streets of Warsaw during a routine sweep of the area by the Germans. Only a year after Poland was invaded, ‘Tomasz’ and 2,000 others were interned in a cavalry barracks, were the first beatings began. He was soon sent to Auschwitz and received his third name; 485910. One of the first stages of the dehumanisation process. In recognition for his actions up to this point, he was promoted to a First Lieutenant in the Secret Polish Army. Witold nearly immediately set up the Union of Military Organisations (ZOW) and quickly united the scattered resistance movements in the camp into one body. Even after a spell of pneumonia, Witold was adamant to maintain inmate morale, provide news from the outside world, distributing extra food and clothes, and most importantly, preparing the inmates for the attack that would liberate them. The ZOW fervently hoped that liberation would come from an Allied air-raid or an airborne assault from the famed Polish 1st Parachute Regiment. The ZOW was the key to receiving any news from within Auschwitz and they provided extremely valuable information to both the Allies and the Secret Polish Army. The harrowing experiences of living within the sadistic society, where death was inevitable, provided the Allies with the true picture of Auschwitz. Not as a POW Camp or even just a concentration camp: it was a death camp. For two and half years, Witold fearlessly threw back the curtain on the atrocities of Auschwitz. He gave up his name and his freedom but never gave up his spirit for a free Poland. His intelligence gathering contributed to the brochure ‘The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland’11, that was distributed by the Polish-Government in exile to the twenty-six signatories of the United Nations in 1942. If Witold was killed before arriving in Auschwitz or if he never arrived at all, we may not have known as much about the camp or the near 1.1 million people who were killed within its gates. Escape from Auschwitz By 1943, after two and a half long years, Witold came to the unfortunate realisation that liberation would not come from an Allied raid. There was more than enough enthusiasm for a raid from the Polish 1st Parachute Regiment but the British simply lacked the range to make an effective air-raid on the camp and the Soviets were unsympathetic to the plight of the Poles and Jews, with similar amounts of antisemitism and anti-Polish sentiment in the USSR as there was in the Third Reich. 8 Theholocaustexplained.org. 2020. Warsaw Ghetto – The Holocaust Explained: Designed For Schools. 9 Auschwitz.org. 2020. History / Auschwitz-Birkenau. 10 Auschwitz.org. 2020. News / Museum / Auschwitz-Birkenau. 11 Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. 2020. The Mass Extermination Of Jews In German Occupied Poland. 3 Peter O’Neill – Witold Pilecki Escape was the only option, seeing how the Allies were not willing to drop weapons or supplies directly onto the camp. In mid-April, Witold was on duty in the bakery at Auschwitz when he and two others overpowered their guard, cut communication wires and broke out in the Polish countryside, taking with them German documents from the camp. They went from small town to small town being aided by a priest before making their way to a safe house in Bochnia. Incredibly this house was owned by the very commander Witold had used as his alias, Tomasz Serafinski12! Now a free man, no longer four digits or an inmate, he regrouped with the Home Army, but also joined a clandestine organisation. NIE (‘No’ in Polish and short for ‘independence’) was created in response to the fear that the Soviet advance into Poland would lead to another occupation. The NIE was anti-communist and hoped to guarantee Poland’s independence Post-War. Witold became part of the intelligence and counter-intelligence wing of the Home Army and finally wrote about his time in Auschwitz. Sadly, after losing many operatives and even a paratrooper while investigating a possible assault on Auschwitz, it was decided that the Home Army lacked the sufficient strength to attack the camp without allied resources and manpower. But a different form of resistance was planned to take place in 1944. The Warsaw Uprising and Occupation The 1944 Warsaw Uprising was the single-largest piece of resistance in the entirety of WWII, with 50,000 Poles rising up in Warsaw to retake the city from the retreating Germans.