Sunday 18 December 2016

Witold Pilecki



Coat of arms of Poland (1927–1939)
and of the Polish government-in-exile until 1956


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The Home Army
Armia Krajowa
Polish resistance movement in World War II


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Witold Pilecki
13 May 1901 – 25 May 1948

Witold Pilecki; Polish pronunciation: [ˈvitɔlt piˈlɛt͡skʲi]; codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold; was a Polish cavalryman and intelligence officer. He served as a rotmistrz with the Polish Army in the Polish-Soviet War, Second Polish Republic, and World War II.

Pilecki was also a co-founder of the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska) a resistance group in German-occupied Poland, and later a member of the underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa). He was the author of Witold's Report, the first comprehensive Allied intelligence report on Auschwitz concentration camp and the Holocaust. He was a devout Roman Catholic.

During World War II, he volunteered for a Polish resistance operation that involved being imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp in order to gather intelligence and later escape. While in the camp, Pilecki organized a resistance movement and, as early as 1941, informed the Western Allies of Nazi Germany's Auschwitz atrocities.

He escaped from the camp in 1943 after nearly two and a half years of imprisonment. Pilecki took part as a combatant in the Warsaw Uprising in August–October 1944. He remained loyal to the London-based Polish government-in-exile after the Soviet-backed communist takeover of Poland and was arrested for espionage in 1947 by the Stalinist secret police (Urząd Bezpieczeństwa) on charges of working for "foreign imperialism", thought to be a euphemism for British Intelligence. He was executed after a show trial in 1948. Until 1989, information about his exploits and fate was suppressed by the communist regime in Poland.

As a result of his efforts, he is considered as "one of the greatest wartime heroes". In the foreword to the book The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, wrote as follows: "When God created the human being, God had in mind that we should all be like Captain Witold Pilecki, of blessed memory." In the introduction to that book Norman Davies, a British historian, wrote: "If there was an Allied hero who deserved to be remembered and celebrated, this was a person with few peers." At the commemoration event of International Holocaust Remembrance Day held in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on 27 January 2013 Ryszard Schnepf, the Polish Ambassador to the US, described Pilecki as a "diamond among Poland's heroes" and "the highest example of Polish patriotism".


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Coat of arms of Poland

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