Page 30 - LOTN Advent issue 57

FAITH AND CULTURE
Witold Pilecki - The Auschwitz Volunteer

The 5th of September this year marked the 12th anniversary
of the posthumous promotion of the late cavalry officer Witold
Pilecki to the rank of colonel of the Polish army. He was an
extraordinary figure, a model for subsequent generations of
Poles and all those who search in their hearts for what is right
and juSt In the 1970s, the British historian Michael Foot, in his
book Six Faces of Courage, recognized Witold as one of the six
bravest heroes of World War II, and in the second of two articles
Lidia Konar documents Witold's escape from Auschwitz and
the continuation of his fight for Polish independence.

BY LIDIA KONAR

ilecki spent two years and seven months in the
camp. At the beginning of 1943, fearing exposure Warsaw mural commemorating Captain W. Pilecki
and losing his own life, he decided to make his [By Anniolek: Wikimedia Commons]
Pescape. On the night of April 26-27, 1943, he broke However, Pilecki was not daunted, and concentrated his
out of the camp through the camp bakery, together with efforts on organizing financial assistance for the families of
two conspirators - Jan Redzej and Edward Ciesielski. prisoners of KL Auschwitz and Majdanek . During this period
1
Pilecki later wrote in his report: "When I left, I had a few he was promoted to cavalry officer rank.
fewer teeth than when I arrived and a broken breastbone. On the 1 of August, 1944, Witold Pilecki took part in
st
So I paid very cheaply for such a period of time in this the Warsaw Uprising. He concealed his military rank and
“sanatorium””. The fugitives followed the railway track joined the fight as a private in the Chrobry II Group. After
and reached the Sola River and then the Vistula, which the failure of the uprising, he was taken prisoner - first he
they crossed by boat. Then they hid in the forest. Fr Jan was sent to the camp in Lamsdorf, and then to Oflag VIIa
Legowicz in Alwernia gave them a meal, and a local in Murnau. Liberated by American soldiers, he got to Italy,
forestry worker, Kazimierz Buczek, led them across the where he joined the Polish II Corps commanded by General
border of the German zone of occupation. The escapees Wladyslaw Anders . In Porto San Giorgio he wrote a longer
2
managed to reach the town of Bochnia where lived the
family of their fellow prisoner, Zygmunt Zabawski. In
Bochnia, Pilecki made contact with the local Home Army
command to organise the liberation of the camp. In this
way, he reached the nearby town of Nowy Wisnicz, where 1 KL Majdanek was a German concentration and
he met the deputy commander of the Home Army, Tomasz prisoner of war camp in the Polish city of Lublin, incorporated
Serafinski, a man under whose name he was registered in into the General Government by the Third Reich. It operated
Auschwitz, and whose documents he found in Warsaw in in the years between 1941 and 1944. The German Nazis
autumn of 1939. Witold spent three months in Serafinski’s murdered 78,000 people there, 59,000 of whom were Jews.
house and wrote there the first version of the camp report. 2 The Polish II Corps (Polish: "Drugi Korpus Wojska
Unfortunately, both the Home Army authorities in Cracow Polskiego”) operated from 1943 to 1947 and was a major
and the Home Army command in Wisnicz did not believe tactical and operational unit of the Polish Armed Forces in
that Pilecki was an escapee from Auschwitz, and his proposal the West during World War II. The majority of the Corps
of an armed attack on the camp in order to free the prisoners were Polish citizens who were deported by the NKVD to
was considered unrealistic and rejected. In response to this the Soviet Gulags during the Soviet Union’s annexation of
denial Pilecki left for Warsaw on August 23, 1943, to give the Eastern Poland in 1939. Following Operation Barbarossa
Home Army a detailed report of his stay in KL Auschwitz. and the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, many of them were
Pilecki’s report contained detailed information about living released and allowed to join the Polish Armed Forces in the
conditions in Auschwitz, as well as the structure of a network East being formed in Southern Russia and Kazakhstan. The
he had founded which he called the Military Organization Corpus was commanded by Lieutenant General Wladyslaw
Union (ZOW). This organization was tasked with building Anders and fought in the Italian Campaign, at the Battle of
the foundations for a future uprising. Moreover, Pilecki wrote Monte Cassino. The battle ended in the victory of the Polish
about the crimes of German Nazis on Poles, Soviet prisoners II Corps which broke the German defence lines and allowed
of war, Gypsies and prisoners of other nationalities, and, the allied armies to go on to liberate Rome. By the end of
above all, on Jews, who began to be murdered en mass in 1945, the corps had grown to well over 100,000 soldiers.
the spring of 1942 in the gas chambers of KL Auschwitz II - Their bear mascot, named Wojtek, was officially enrolled
Birkenau. Pilecki also presented his plan to attack the camp into the unit as a private soldier. After the end of World War
to the Home Army, but the Home Army leaders in Warsaw II in 1945, Wojtek came to Berwickshire, Scotland, with the
decided that Pilecki’s plan was too hazardous. rest of the 22nd Polish Company, which was the part of the

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