The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Read online

  There is also more than one somewhat disparaging comment about those who had spent the war in less arduous billets: “So, fine people were going to their deaths here [Auschwitz] and losing their lives so as not to implicate anyone outside, while far weaker people than us were casually calling us skeletons.” He writes with some scorn of his reaction after his escape to people on the outside: “At times I felt that I was wandering through a great house and would suddenly open the door to a room in which there were only children: ‘... Ah, the children are playing...’ ” Or: “The boundary between honesty and common dishonesty had been meticulously blurred.”

  The Mission

  Pilecki’s organization had three principal goals: to boost morale by obtaining and distributing to its members news from outside and extra supplies; to send out reports about the camp; and to prepare for an armed uprising. In the short term, it focused on helping inmates to cope with the frightful conditions. Through well-placed contacts, men were assigned to easier indoor work details (Kommandos in the camp jargon, the camp’s official language being German), sick men were brought into the hospital, extra food and clothing were scrounged or, to use the camp vernacular, “organized.” He claims that by early 1942 his organization had penetrated, he uses the phrase “taken over,” every Kommando but one.

  Indeed, the story of how enterprising political prisoners4 were able eventually to wrest control of the top positions throughout the concentration camp system from the mostly German criminal prisoners who initially held them is extraordinary, but is not part of Pilecki’s tale. As the war progressed, the German authorities found political prisoners better able to handle the administrative complexities of a huge camp like Auschwitz than the criminals who had originally held those posts. Even during Pilecki’s time in the camp, he points out that conditions did improve marginally for a variety of reasons, not least of which was a lessening of the German criminals’ hold on power.

  However, the organization’s longer-term goal was to recruit and organize a body of men who could, when the circumstances were right, rise up and take over the camp. This would have been necessary if, for instance, the SS had shown signs of wanting to liquidate all the inmates. While such a group was indeed ready, and Pilecki states that it was in fact prepared to take over the camp (“for some months now we had been able to take over the camp on more or less a daily basis”), it never received the outside assistance without which it would have had little chance of success.

  Pilecki envisaged a land operation, perhaps supported by the Polish Parachute Brigade from England and using weapons parachuted into the camp—both of which were quite unrealistic expectations at the time, given Auschwitz’s location. However, he was only too aware that any premature action on his part could have considerable repercussions outside the camp in terms of local reprisals and, as a military man, he was not prepared to take such a major decision without orders.

  The Polish Home Army did in fact consider attacking the camp, but was never strong enough to do so, since it calculated that it could hold off the German SS garrison, which was several thousand strong,5 only long enough to enable between two hundred and three hundred inmates to get away in safety. The remaining inmates, perhaps as many as one hundred thousand, would have had to fend for themselves, leading to a bloody massacre. There was also a strong likelihood that the Germans would then wreak vengeance on the local Polish population. Nonetheless, the thought that the Germans might want to murder all the remaining inmates as the Red Army approached continued to worry the Home Army. In the summer of 1944, one of the Polish SOE-trained operatives (cichociemni in Polish), Second Lieutenant Stefan Jasieński, carried out a reconnaissance of the area around the camp, but was picked up in September and imprisoned in the camp. While his subsequent fate is unclear, there were reports that he in fact survived Auschwitz. No attack on the camp was ever launched and the SS never carried out a final mass slaughter of the remaining inmates.

  The Man

  Witold Pilecki was born on the 13th of May (the 30th of April, Old Style6 ) 1901 into a patriotic Polish family in Olonets, a small town in Karelia near the Finnish border in what was then the Russian Empire, Poland having been partitioned by Russia, Prussia and Austria at the end of the 18th century. Educated in Wilno (today Vilnius) and Oryol, at an early age Pilecki became used to conspiratorial Polish organizations proscribed by the Russians, including the Polish scouting movement. He later took part in military operations against the Bolsheviks in the Polish–Bolshevik War of 1919–1920.

  In 1921, forced to abandon his studies in Fine Art at the Stefan Batory University in Wilno (in newly independent Poland) for lack of funds, he joined the Association for the Nation’s Security (Związek Bezpieczeństwa Kraju), a semi-volunteer organization, in which he served for a couple of years. A man of many talents who wrote poetry, painted and played the guitar, Pilecki was posted in 1926 to the 26th Uhlan Regiment and promoted reserve second lieutenant in the cavalry. He was to hold this rank until promoted first lieutenant in November 1941 while in Auschwitz (a departure from the Home Army’s usual practice of not promoting men in camps), his final promotion to cavalry captain coming in February 1944.

  Witold Pilecki–Wilno (Vilnius), 1923.

  Sukurcze Manor, the Pilecki family estate.

  Witold Pilecki with the youth of the Lida district at a gathering in Warsaw–1930s.

  Witold Pilecki–1920s.

  Witold Pilecki leading a cavalry parade in Lida.

  Witold Pilecki with his wife Maria and son Andrzej at Ostrów Mazowiecka, 1932 or 1933.

  Witold Pilecki with his wife and children, Zofia and Andrzej, 1934.

  Second Lieutenant Witold Pilecki (seated left) with Major Jan Włodarkiewicz, Commanding Officer of TAP (Tajna Armia Polska—the Polish Secret Army).

  Previous eight photos: Pilecki Family

  In the 1920s he took over the running of his small family estate, which lay in what is today Belarus, and married a local schoolteacher, Maria Ostrowska in 1931.7 They had two children. He was much attracted to matters military and formed a volunteer cavalry unit which was eventually integrated into the regular order of battle, and it has been surmised that he worked for military intelligence or counter-intelligence in the thirties.

  Like many Poles of his generation, he was profoundly patriotic and Catholic, and appears to have been emotionally in tune with many of the views of Marshal Piłsudski— Poland’s de facto leader until his death in 1935. While never particularly political, Pilecki does appear to echo some of Piłsudski’s frustrations with politicians and the rather messy democratic process as it played out in interwar Poland.

  Mobilized in August 1939 shortly before the Germans attacked Poland, Pilecki fought in his cavalry unit, attached to the 19th Infantry Division, which was defeated by the Germans on the 6th of September. He then fought on with various units as late as the 17th of October, long after the Soviet invasion of Poland, the fall of Warsaw and the formation of a new Polish government-in-exile in Paris. The unit was then disbanded.

  Together with a number of army officers and several civilians, in November 1939 Pilecki helped to set up an underground military resistance organization: the TAP (Tajna Armia Polska—the Polish Secret Army). Founded on patriotic and Christian principles, the TAP had no political party affiliation and grew to supposedly between eight thousand and twelve thousand members before it was amalgamated at the end of 1941 with the ZWZ (Związek Walki Zbrojnej—The Union for Armed Combat), which in 1942 became better known as the AK (Armia Krajowa—Home Army).8

  Having volunteered to get himself arrested and sent to Auschwitz as a prisoner in order to carry out his secret mission for the Polish Underground, Pilecki deliberately walked into a German street round-up in Warsaw on the 19th of September 1940. He arrived in Auschwitz during the night of the 21st–22nd of September, in the second Warsaw transport (the first having gone in August), under the assumed name of Tomasz Serafiński—a real person whom Pilecki did not know, bu
t whose identity papers had been found in a Warsaw “safe house” where Serafiński had stayed and which Pilecki had been using. Despite the terrible conditions in the camp and the constant need to stay alert and alive, Pilecki quickly sought out other imprisoned TAP members to form the nucleus of his new organization.

  Using the TAP as a model, his Auschwitz organization, ZOW (Związek Organizacji Wojskowych—The Union of Military Organizations), was set up on the principle of “cells,” or what Pilecki called “fives” (sometimes a “five” had more than five members). The “fives” operated independently of one another so that in the event of the Germans getting hold of some of the members and torturing them, it was impossible for one person to betray the whole organization. The “cells” then recruited further “fives,” who in turn went about recruiting others. He set up the first “top five” as he called it, as early as October 1940.

  Standing from the left: Jan Redzej, Witold Pilecki, Edward Ciesielski—escapees from Auschwitz. Here, standing in front of the Serafiński family house in Nowy Wiśnicz, summer 1943.

  Witold Pilecki–1943.

  Witold Pilecki in front of "Koryznówka," the Serafiński family house, 1943.

  Second Lieutenant Marian Szyszko-Bohusz, Maria Szelągowska and Cavalry Captain Witold Pilecki–Rome, 1945.

  On the 8th of May 1947, Pilecki was arrested by the Ministry of Public Security (Ministerstwo Bezpieczeństwa Publicznego or MBP) and charged with being a “Western spy”.

  A pistol and ammunition alleged to have belonged to Pilecki.

  On the 15th of May 1948, following a show trial, Pilecki was sentenced to death and was executed ten days later at the Mokotów Prison in Warsaw.

  Previous seven photos: Pilecki Family

  There is some dispute as to when he set up his second “top five.” In June 1943, just after his escape, Pilecki stated that it was in November 1940, while later that year and in 1945 he put it in March 1941. He then set up the third “top five” in May 1941, the fourth one in October of the same year and the fifth in November. There are some discrepancies as to the membership of these “top fives” in Pilecki’s own writings, as in other sources. However, ultimate proof of the efficacy of his structure is the fact that Pilecki himself was never picked up or indeed identified by the camp authorities as the ZOW’s primary organizer.

  The organization almost immediately started sending out information on conditions in Auschwitz to the Polish Underground authorities. Pilecki’s first report was sent out in October 1940 by way of a released inmate, eventually reaching the Polish government-in-exile in London in March 1941. Indeed, it was Pilecki’s organization which provided the outside Polish authorities with information on the inhumane treatment of Soviet POWs in Auschwitz and the start of the mass murder of Jews (the Holocaust) in Birkenau/Brzezinka, information which the Polish government-in-exile then passed on to the other Allies. Pilecki in his messages urged the Polish Underground to attack Auschwitz, but never received any reply to this request.

  In addition to the military and self-help dimension of his work, Pilecki, who emphasized his own apolitical approach, managed to contribute to the forming towards the end of 1941 of a Political Committee embracing all the different political groupings represented in the camp: a notable achievement, given lingering prewar antipathies and the prevailing conditions in the camp. Eventually accused by other inmates of wanting to create an organization in order to feed his own ego (a quite unjustified assertion), Pilecki turned over command of the ZOW to the commander of the ZWZ/AK group in the camp, Lieutenant Colonel Kazimierz Rawicz, who was in the camp under the assumed name of Jan Hilkner.

  Concerned eventually that too many good Poles had been shipped out to other camps and that the Polish Underground authorities appeared to be turning a deaf ear to his pleas for help in liberating the camp, Pilecki escaped in April 1943 from the camp bakery together with two other inmates, in order to plead his case in person. The local and regional AK commanders, skeptical of his story, were unwilling to take up his call to attack the camp and free the inmates.

  Pilecki later worked in AK High Command in Warsaw, became a member of the anti-communist deep-cover underground organization NIE (Niepodległość—Independence), which was to operate when the Red Army arrived, and he fought with distinction in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.9 Taken prisoner by the Germans, he then spent time in Lamsdorf and Murnau POW camps, after which he joined the Polish Second Corps in Italy. It was there that he wrote the 1945 Report and from there that he began his fateful final mission to Poland.

  Pilecki set about his task in the camp with astonishing single-mindedness. While he talks freely of his friends, he never once mentions his wife and children, and from the Report it is unclear where they were during his time inside and whether he even saw them after his escape. He makes only passing references to his family in terms of receiving parcels, worrying that his relatives might buy him out of Auschwitz while he was still absorbed in setting up his resistance network, and writing to them from time to time.

  This absorption in what Pilecki saw as an existential struggle for the survival of the Polish nation is the nub of a terrible moral dilemma, doubtlessly faced by many people who have families and who have chosen to join resistance movements. Should they become involved in activities which might endanger their loved ones? There is of course no correct answer, and I believe that we, from the comfort of our retrospective armchairs, have little standing to judge such people one way or another. They did what they felt to be right at the time, and we can but admire them for even asking the question in the first place. How much easier it would have been simply to lower the brim of one’s trilby and take the quiet route to anonymous obscurity.

  That was not Pilecki’s way. Indeed, once he had volunteered to go to Auschwitz to set up a resistance movement there, it was unlikely that he would ever have been willing to lead a life of quiet compromise. It was this trait which led ultimately to the tragic culmination of his life which, while beyond the scope of the Report, is essential for an understanding of the whole man.

  After the war, Pilecki, like most Poles, was opposed to the Soviet-imposed atheist, communist régime in Poland. Therefore, in 1945 he undertook a mission to liaise with anti-communist resistance organizations within Poland and report on conditions to General Władysław Anders, commander of Polish Second Corps under British command, who was emerging as the Poles’ leader in the West. Pilecki’s wife and children were in Poland and he was able to visit them. Ignoring orders from Anders to leave the country when it was clear that the communist authorities were on to him, he was eventually arrested on the 8th of May 1947 and tortured by the Polish secret police, later telling a family member during a prison visit that Auschwitz had been child’s play (igraszka) compared to his treatment at the hands of his Soviet-trained countrymen.

  Accused of spying and preparing armed attacks on members of the Polish secret police, charges he vehemently denied, he was tried in a Military Court, convicted and finally executed in the Mokotów Prison on Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw in the evening of the 25th of May 1948... by his own countrymen.

  It is hard to imagine a more terrible ending to a life for which St. Paul’s moving words to St. Timothy are, perhaps, a most fitting epitaph:

  I have fought the good fight,

  I have stayed the course,

  I have kept the faith.

  Pilecki’s final resting place is unknown. He was fully exonerated posthumously in the 1990s and is now treated as an heroic figure in modern Poland.

  Jarek Garliński

  1 On the Eastern Front, unlike in the West, little respect was shown for the Geneva Conventions which, in any case, the USSR had never signed.

  2 Sometimes written Związek Organizacji Wojskowej (the Union of Military Organization) which seems less logical.

  3 Many cases were actually reviewed by a couple of inmates who were jurists in order to retain some semblance of legality.

  4 These were often communist
s, who were by and large the best-organized group in the camps.

  5 As late as August 1944, the SS garrison still consisted of 3,250 men. The Germans could have also pulled in additional forces. The Home Army could have gathered no more than a few hundred armed men, if that.

  6 The pre-revolutionary Julian Russian calendar (known as Old Style) was 13 days behind the Western Gregorian calendar by the 20th century. Bolshevik Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1918, when the 14th of February followed the 31st of January.

  7 She died aged 96 in 2002.

  8 Interestingly enough, the Home Army often hid its identity under the acronym PZP (Polski Związek Powstańczy—the Polish Insurrectionary Organization).

  9 To be distinguished from the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943.

  Montage of Pilecki’s photo and his handwritten covering letter to General Pełczyński.

  Letter: PUMST

  Photo: Pilecki Family

  Dear Sir,

  I deliver my paper to you, Sir, because I am unable to take it with me,1 and because Senior Officers and Commanders of our underground forces in Poland might find interesting these details of an area of Home Army work which is completely unknown. I have been offered a commercial deal to publish this for big bucks in America, but for the time being I have not decided to take this step because I have not had the time to polish the style and also because I would feel remorse at selling it for money. There have been others who have wanted to get hold of it from me, but in my opinion the right thing to do is to put this in your hands, General. Perhaps someone in London might also find it interesting. Please do not treat this as (exclusively) sensationalism, for these are the experiences at the very highest level of a number of honest Poles. Not everything has been related here, for it was not possible to do so in a short time. Nothing has been “overdone“; even the smallest fib would profane the memory of those fine people who lost their lives there.