Witold Pilecki in 1939 Source
Witold
Pilecki was a Polish soldier, a rittmeister of the Cavalry during the
German invasion of Poland, the founder of the Secret Polish
Armyresistance group in German-occupied Poland in November 1939, and a
member of the underground Home Army, which was formed in February 1942.
As
the author of Witold’s Report, the first intelligence report on
Auschwitz concentration camp, Pilecki enabled the Polish
government-in-exile to convince the Allies that the Holocaust was taking
place.
Going into Auschwitz
American surveillance photo of Birkenau (1944). South is at the top in this photo. Source
In
1940, Pilecki presented to his superiors a plan to enter Germany’s
Auschwitz concentration camp, gather intelligence on the camp from the
inside, and organize inmate resistance. Until then, little had been
known about the Germans’ running of the camp and it was thought to be an
internment camp or large prison rather than a death camp. His superiors
approved the plan and provided him with a false identity card in the
name of “Tomasz Serafiński”. On 19 September 1940, he deliberately went
out during a Warsaw street roundup and was caught by the Germans, along
with some 2,000 innocent civilians. After two days detention in the
Light Horse Guards Barracks, where prisoners suffered beatings with
rubber truncheons, Pilecki was sent to Auschwitz and was assigned inmate
number 4859.
