TFH 9/20: Unbelievable Courage - Infiltrating Auschwitz

This is a story that after I first read it, I could hardly believe it.

Witold Pilecki was born to Polish parents on May 13, 1901. Pilecki's family had been exiled to Olonets, Russia by the Tsarist armies that put down a Polish uprising in 1863-1864.

At age 17 in the waning days of World War I, he served in a Polish self-defense unit - a militia - until his home was overrun by the Bolshevik army from the east. He continued waging Poland's struggle for freedom as a partisan guerilla fighting behind enemy lines. He entered the regular Polish Army in 1919 and fought into 1920 in the Polish-Soviet War, being twice decorated for gallantry with the Krzyz Walecznych, or "Cross of Valor" - roughly equivalent to the US decorations of the Distinguished Service Cross, Navy Cross, or Air Force Cross, just one notch beneath the Medal of Honor.

Pilecki then found peace. He married in 1931 and he and his wife Maria had two children. Their son was born in 1932, a daughter in 1933. Witold Pilecki farmed and worked within his community. Sadly, the clouds of war would return.

As Europe descended towards World War II, Pilecki was mobilized back into the army on August 26, 1939 as a cavalry platoon commander. He served with distinction against the Nazi army invading from the west and the Soviet army invading from the east. Once Poland was overrun, he journeyed to Warsaw and there, with one of his fellow officers, Major Jan Wlodarkiewicz, founded the Polish Secret Army - one of the first resistance groups in occupied Poland.

He worked to train and equip his comrades. Elsewhere in Poland, ominous signs of the Nazi occupation were appearing. Concentration camps were erected. Jews were rounded up and forced to live in ghettos and to work as slave laborers. Thousands of people disappeared and were assumed to have been murdered. The Polish resistance needed information on one concentration camp in particular: Auschwitz. Nothing was known about the conditions in the camp or, in fact, its true sinister purpose.

Witold Pilecki had a solution: infiltrate the camp to gather information, organize resistance, and take action.

He volunteered.

On September 19 or 20, 1940 (reports differ), Witold Pilecki - armed only with false identification papers casting him as "Tomasz Serafinski" - walked out onto the streets of Warsaw to be rounded up with Jews being deported to Auschwitz.

He was tattooed with prisoner number 4859 at the camp. Miraculously, Pilecki survived both disease and the guards of the camp and worked to raise prisoner morale, organize camp resistance movements, and pass information to the Polish resistance outside the camp. Some of this information eventually made it back to the British; an early window into the horror of the holocaust.

He escaped from Auschwitz the night of April 26-27, 1943 after spending about 18 months in the camp. He rejoined the Polish resistance and continued to fight the Nazi occupiers until Poland was overrun by the Soviet Army. Witold's post-war story is too extensive to retell here, but he continued to fight for Poland's freedom, but was not to live to see Poland finally free from oppression.

Witold Pilecki was arrested by the Polish Ministry of Public Security (the Soviet KGB in Polish clothes) on May 8, 1947. After imprisonment and a show trial, he was executed as a traitor and spy on May 25, 1948. His resting place is unknown.

Witold's wife Maria passed away in 2002. In 2006, he was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honor.

A book about the life of Witold Pilecki, The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, will be published next year. I will be buying a copy for sure.

Witold Pilecki was an incredible warrior against tyranny. All freedom-loving people should honor his life and courage, a life that was a finest hour for the cause of all humanity.