The Auschwitz Volunteer Beyond Bravery

by Pilecki, Captain Witold; Garlinski, Jarek; Davies, Norman; Schudrich, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781607720102
• ISBN10: 1607720108
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-04-30
• Publisher: Aquila Polonica

Summary

In 1940, the Polish Underground wanted to know what was happening inside the recently opened Auschwitz concentration camp. Polish army officer Witold Pilecki volunteered to be arrested by the Germans and reported from inside the camp. His intelligence reports, smuggled out in 1941, were among the first eyewitness accounts of Auschwitz atrocities: the extermination of Soviet POWs, its function as a camp for Polish political prisoners, and the “final solution” for Jews. Pilecki received brutal treatment until he escaped in April 1943; soon after, he wrote a brief report. This book is the first English translation of a 1945 expanded version. In the foreword, Poland's chief rabbi states, “If heeded, Pilecki's early warnings might have changed the course of history.” Pilecki's story was suppressed for half a century after his 1948 arrest by the Polish Communist regime as a “Western spy.” He was executed and expunged from Polish history. Pilecki writes in staccato style but also interjects his observations on humankind's lack of progress: “We have strayed, my friends, we have strayed dreadfully... we are a whole level of hell worse than animals!” These remarkable revelations are amplified by 40 b&w photos, illus., and maps

Author Biography

Pilecki, Captain Witold (pronounced VEE-told pee-LETS-kee)

Captain Witold Pilecki (1901–1948), a cavalry officer in the Polish Army, was one of the founders of a resistance organization in German-occupied Poland during World War II that quickly evolved into the Polish Underground Army.

Pilecki is the only man known to have volunteered to get himself arrested and sent to Auschwitz as a prisoner. His secret undercover mission for the Polish Underground: smuggle out intelligence about this new German concentration camp, and build a resistance organization among the inmates with the ultimate goal of liberating the camp.

Barely surviving nearly three years of starvation, disease and brutality, Pilecki accomplished his mission before escaping in April 1943. Soon after his escape, Pilecki wrote two relatively brief reports for his Polish Army superiors about his time in Auschwitz. In 1945 he wrote his most comprehensive report of more than one hundred single-spaced typed foolscap pages—it is this last, most comprehensive, report which Aquila Polonica is publishing in English for the first time.

Pilecki continued his work in the High Command of the Polish Underground Army, fought in the Warsaw Uprising (August–October 1944), was taken prisoner by the Germans, and ended the war in a German POW camp.

In late 1945, Pilecki, who was married and the father of two children, volunteered to return undercover to Poland where conditions were chaotic at war's end as the communists were asserting control. His mission this time: liaise with anti-communist resistance organizations and report back on conditions within the country.

He was captured by the postwar Polish communist regime, tortured and executed in 1948 as a traitor and a “Western spy.” Pilecki's name was erased from Polish history until the collapse of communism in 1989.

Pilecki was fully exonerated posthumously in the 1990s. Today he is regarded as one of Poland's heroes.

Translator Bio

Garlinski, Jarek

Translator Jarek Garlinski was born in London, England, and grew up bilingual in English and Polish. His father was noted historian and author Jozef Garlinski, a former prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau. His mother Eileen Short-Garlinska was one of only a few Britons who spent World War II in Warsaw. Both parents served in the Polish Underground Army during the war.

Educated at the University of Nottingham, the University of Grenoble, and the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University of London, Garlinski is fluent in English, French, Polish and Russian, with a distinguished career in education.

Garlinski is a member of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America and has been decorated by the Polish Ministry of Defense and the Knights of Malta for services to Polish culture.

He has translated numerous books of Polish literature and history, specializing in the World War II era.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. xi
Foreword	p. xi
Translators Introductory Note	p. xix
Publisher's Note	p. xxiii
Selected Highlights from Pilecki's 1945 Report	p. xxix
List of Maps	p. xxxi
Historical Horizon Captain Witold Pilecki: The Report, the Mission, the Man	p. xxxiii
Captain Pilecki's Covering Letter to Major General Tadeusz Pelczynski	p. 1
Captain Witold Pilecki's 1945 Auschwitz Report	p. 5
Glossary of English, German and Polish Terms and Acronyms	p. 335
German-Language Positions and Ranks at Auschwitz Mentioned by Pilecki	p. 343
Index of People and Places Referred to by Pilecki with Either a Code Number or Letter	p. 345
Chronology of Pilecki's 1945 Report	p. 355
Index	p. 365
Discussion Questions	p. 397
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Misconceptions about the Second World War in Europe appear to be endless; everyone, including the most advanced experts, can always learn something more and increase the precision of their understanding. One basic misconception, for example, concerns the moral framework of the war; many Westerners imagine that the war in Europe saw just one evil regime, the Third Reich of Adolf Hitler, which was opposed by a coalition of democratic allies dedicated to freedom, law and justice. In reality, the largest combatant power of the war, the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin, despite its differences from Nazism, can only be included in the criminal, mass-murdering category. Stalin began the war in September 1939 as Hitler's partner in crime, and made no effort to restrict his evil practices when the Soviet Union had been attacked by Germany in June 1941. All the countries like Poland which lay between Germany and the Soviet Union felt the lash of both their neighbours, and at war's end they were denied any meaningful liberation. As Captain Pilecki understood very well, the only valid moral stance was to oppose Nazism and Stalinism alike.Another common misconception concerns the scourge of the concentration camps. Many Westerners continue to imagine that concentration camps were somehow a monopoly of the Nazis; they equally fail to make the important distinction between concentration camps, like Dachau or Majdanek and fully fledged death camps, like Treblinka. Few of them realise that the Soviet 'liberators of Auschwitz' were busy running a massive network of concentration camps of their own. In reality, the Russian acronym, the GULag, stands for State Board of Concentration Camps. All the indications are that Soviet instruments of repression consumed more human beings than their Nazi counterparts. Pilecki's third Report on Auschwitz was written in 1945 at a time when his fight against German tyranny had ended and when his fight against Soviet tyranny was about to begin. It is a poignant reminder of the double threat which Europe faced in the mid-20th Century.I myself became fully aware of the greatness of Witold Pilecki while conducting research on the Warsaw Rising of 1944. Here was a man, who almost single-handedly had held up the German panzers on one of Warsaw's main thoroughfares for a fortnight; using the pseudonym 'Roman', he then disappeared into his dugout and continued the struggle until the Rising capitulated over two months later. Only then did I realise that this was the same heroic character, who four years earlier had deliberately arranged to be arrested by the SS and be transported to Auschwitz. In 1943, having engineered his escape, he wrote the first version of his Report on Auschwitz, which I had read and which had been the first of several attempts to inform the outside world of what was really happening. Pilecki was a Polish officer and Catholic who viewed his fight against his country's oppression as synonymous with his patriotic and religious duty. If ever there was an Allied hero who deserved to be remembered and celebrated, this was a person with few peers. Yet Pilecki's astonishing career did not end with the declaration of peace. He was put to death by an act of judicial murder, destroyed by a Communist regime which was working for Stalin's interests and which treated all non-Communist resistance fighters as traitors and Nazi-lovers. Pilecki's name mirrors the tragic fate of millions whom the West forgot. Only when one grasps the true horror of his fate can one comprehend what the Second World War in Europe was really about. Norman Davies, FBA Oxford, Great Britain February 2012