Warsaw to march for "bravest of the brave", Holocaust whistleblower Witold Pilecki
On Sunday Warsaw will host a march to mark the 116th birth anniversary of Witold Pilecki, a volunteer to Auschwitz hero of Poland's World War II resistance and author of the first comprehensive report on the Holocaust.
The march will be preceded by a mass in Warsaw's St. John's Cathedral, after which the marchers will proceed through downtown Warsaw to a memorial plaque to Pilecki, where they will attend a commemorative ceremony attended by dep PM, Minister of Culture and National Heritage Piotr Glinski.
Witold Pilecki was a Polish soldier and rotamaster in the pre-war Polish cavalry. In German-occupied Poland he founded the Secret Polish Army resistance group in November 1939, subsequently joining the 1942-formed underground Home Army (AK) (see: NOTE 1).
Called "the bravest of the brave" and considered one of the top five war heroes of all time, Pilecki compiled the so-called Witold's Report, the first comprehensive account of proceedings in the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Holocaust.
During World War Two Pilecki volunteered for a resistance operation to get imprisoned in the Auschwitz camp, where he planned to gather intelligence and escape. At Auschwitz Pilecki organized a resistance movement and as early as 1941 informed the Western Allies about Nazi atrocities in the
camp.
The night from April 26 to 27 marks the 74th anniversary of Polish rotamaster Witld Pilecki's escape from the Auschwitz Nazi-German death camp, where he voluntarily let himself be imprisoned to gather intelligence about the site for the Allies.
Pilecki and his two friends Jan Redzej and Edward Ciesielski made their daring escape from Auschwitz on the night of April 26, 1943.
For their escape from Auschwitz Pilecki, Redzej and Ciesielski equipped themselves with false identity papers, civilian clothes, money, a special solution preventing dogs from picking up their scent - and cyanide capsules in case they were caught by the Nazis. They fled the camp through its bakery, which was located outside the camp premises. As the bakery staff, all prisoners, were locked in the bakery at night and taken back to the camp by SS guards in the morning, Pilecki and his two companions made sure they would be working there on the getaway night. At about 2 a.m., after some trouble with forcing the bakery door, and unpredictable behaviour of sluggish SS-guards, one scuffling to-and-fro, the other sleeping, who Pilecki and co. were ready to jump at and tie if necessary, they finally struggled out of the bakery to feel, as Pilecki put it in the Report, "a hit of a chilly breeze on heated heads, as the stars winked at us".
Pilecki wrote in his Report that once the guards had realised their disappearance, 9 shots were fired in the direction of "bakers", yet all missed as they "galloped harum-scarum into the dark like race horces".
After a week's trekking through woods and marshes, during which time Pilecki was wounded in a skirmish with German patrol troops, they reached Bochnia, where Pilecki got in touch with the Home Army in Krakow and presented a detailed report on attrocities taking place in Auschwitz.
Soon Pilecki moved to Warsaw, subsequently serving briefly in a partisan unit in central-south Poland and again returning to Warsaw to work for the underground. In August 1943 he presented his Auschwitz report to the Home Army supreme command. Unfortunately, his plan of freeing the Auschwitz prisoners was not accepted in face of the dominating strength of German forces, but mostly because the daring plan lacked support from the Allied forces.
After escaping from Auschwitz in 1943, Pilecki moved to Warsaw, subsequently serving briefly in a partisan unit in central-south Poland and again returning to Warsaw to work for the underground.
In August 1943 he presented his Auschwitz report to the Home Army supreme command. Unfortunately, his plan of freeing the Auschwitz prisoners was not accepted in face of the dominating strength of German forces as well as passivity of the Allied side.
In 1944 Pilecki fought in the Warsaw Uprising against the Germans (see: NOTE 2).
He remained loyal to the London-based Polish exile government after the communist takeover of Poland, and on May 8, 1947 was arrested on charges of working for "foreign imperialism" and after a show trial sentenced to death.
He was executed by a gunshot to the back of the head on 25 May 1948 in the basement of infamous Warsaw Mokotow prison. His body was most probably dumped into a nameless grave and has yet to be found. Information about his activities and fate was suppressed by the Polish communist regime until 1989.
As Pilecki's burial site remains unknown, he is among the communist regime victims whose remains are currently sought in countrywide exhumations by Poland's National Remembrance Institute (IPN).
Witold's Report, considered world's first comprehensive intel on Holocaust, was presented at the last International Book Fair in London, promoting Poland's "bravest of the brave" among both compatriots (with the support of the Polish Institute and the Polish Social and Cultural Centre), as well as foreigners at the fair in Olympia.
Pilecki was posthumously awarded Poland's highest decoration the Order of the White Eagle by late President Lech Kaczynski, and later promoted to the rank of Colonel.(PAP)
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NOTE 1: Founded in 1942, the Home Army was the largest underground resistance force in German-occupied Europe, with up to half a million soldiers fighting in its ranks. In his book 'God's Playground. A History of Poland', historian Norman Davies said that "the Home Army could fairly claim to be the largest of European resistance [organisations]".
Along with various combat activities, the AK was also widely involved in rescuing fellow citizens of Jewish descent, among others through the famous 1942-founded Council to Aid Jews (Rada Pomocy Zydom) codenamed 'Zegota' - the only organisation in Europe and the world established to defend and provide help to Jewish people in ghettos and outside.
After the war many Home Army soldiers refused to lay down their arms and continued fighting against Poland's Soviet-imposed communist regime, winning the name "Enduring Soldiers". They are also sometimes called the "Cursed Soldiers" for being treated as outlaws and forced into oblivion by the communist state. Jozef Franczak, known as the last Enduring Soldier, perished in an ambush as late as 1963.
NOTE 2: The Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944 as the biggest resistance operation in Nazi-occupied Europe. Initially intended to last several days, it continued for over two months before being suppressed by the Germans. The uprising claimed the lives of 18,000 insurgents and around 180,000 civilians.
After the insurgents surrendered and the remaining 500,000 residents were expelled, the Germans methodically burned down and blew up Warsaw house by house. By January 1945, 85 percent of the buildings had been destroyed.(PAP)
