Witold Pilecki is the only inmate known to be voluntarily imprisoned at Auschwitz.
Witold was born on 13th May 1901 to patriotic Polish Catholic parents in Olonets, then a small town in the Russian Empire.
After serving in the Polish Army and seeing action in the Polish–Soviet War, he settled in Lida (then in Poland, now in Belarus). He married a local school teacher Maria Ostrowska in 1931 and they had two children.
Witold was called up to defend Poland against the Nazi invasion but following defeat he made his way to Warsaw to join the underground resistance. In August 1940, a group of Polish political opponents were imprisoned in Auschwitz. When telegrams arrived announcing their death, Witold become suspicious as to what was really happening at this place, he volunteered to investigate.
On 19th September 1940, Witold intentionally allowed himself to be arrested by the Nazis. He was transported to Auschwitz with around 1,800 other Polish political prisoners. He was to remain there for two and a half years as prisoner 4859.
His mission was to raise the morale of Polish political prisoners by bringing news from outside the camp, as well as to report on camp conditions, to the Home Army in Warsaw. In October 1940, he successfully sent out his first report, taken by a released inmate as Auschwitz at this time was a concentration camp for political prisoners. The report made it to the Polish Government-in-exile in March 1941, who passed it onto the Allies.
Witold’s time in the camp meant he saw it evolve from a place of holding individuals in depraved conditions, to the experiments that were conducted on Soviets and Roma and finally the preparations for industrial slaughter.
Witold established a secret network of captured resistance fighters inside Auschwitz and set about discovering as much as they could about the operations of Auschwitz. They build a radio transmitter from smuggled parts and reported on conditions until the risk of discovery became too high.
His bravery and will-power cannot be overstated. In his report he describes the hunger as ‘the hardest battle of [his] life’. He harboured doubts during stays in the lice-ridden hospital ward suffering from Pneumonia and Typhus. He was overwhelmed by his mission at times, but refused to admit it to his colleagues in case it damaged their morale.
To begin with, escape attempts for his group of resistance fighters were forbidden due to the nature of group reprisals enacted by the Nazis. However, once group punishment was abandoned, the organisation actively assisted escapees. On one occasion, Witold gave up his own planned escape route through the sewers, to an inmate in more imminent danger.
He eventually escaped in April 1943 when he and his two companions removed the bolts from a heavy door whilst the guards’ backs were turned. The three escapees journeyed for 100km on foot before they could rest in relative safety. It took them a week. He would then return to Warsaw some months later to take arm ups in the Warsaw uprising of 1944 but he was captured and sent to Germany.
When the camps were liberated at the end of the war, he was sent to Italy where he joined the Polish Armed Forces. It was here that he wrote his comprehensive report on his time in Auschwitz, now known as ‘Witold’s Report’. Despite his relative safety in Italy, Pilecki returned once again to Warsaw to gather intelligence on the newly established Polish Communist government. The Nazis had been overthrown, but so had the Polish Government-in-exile. To Witold and the Home Army, Poland was still not free, but subservient to their Soviet ‘liberators’.
Witold was captured by the Communist Polish authorities on 8th May 1947. Accused of spying and of planning to assassinate key figures in the Polish police, he was coerced and tortured to sign his ‘confession’. A sham trial was set up and he was subsequently executed on 25th May 1948 in Mokotow prison.
It took many years for Witold’s name to be recognised for the hero he was, not only for Poland but for democracy as a whole.
What bravery and determination it took to stay in a place for so long, that we now know is synonymous for death and despair. His vital reports helped the allies build an understanding of what the Nazis were creating, not only in Poland, but across Europe, reports that could be used in war crimes trials. How awful that Witold’s life would be taken by the replacing regime.