The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch is a 1969 American epic Revisionist Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates. The plot concerns an aging outlaw gang on the Mexico–United States border trying to adapt to the changing modern world of 1913. The film was controversial because of its graphic violence and its portrayal of crude men attempting to survive by any available means.

The screenplay was co-written by Peckinpah, Walon Green, and Roy N. Sickner. The Wild Bunch was filmed in Technicolor and Panavision, in Mexico, notably at the Hacienda Ciénaga del Carmen, deep in the desert between Torreón and Saltillo, Coahuila, and on the Rio Nazas.

The Wild Bunch is noted for intricate, multi-angle, quick-cut editing using normal and slow motion images, a revolutionary cinema technique in 1969. The writing of Green, Peckinpah, and Sickner was nominated for a best screenplay Oscar, and the music by Jerry Fielding was nominated for Best Original Score. Additionally, Peckinpah was nominated for an Outstanding Directorial Achievement award by the Directors Guild of America, and cinematographer Lucien Ballard won the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography.

In 1999, the Library of Congress selected The Wild Bunch for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant". The film was ranked 80th in the American Film Institute's 100 best American films and the 69th most thrilling film. In 2008, the AFI listed 10 best films in 10 genres and ranked The Wild Bunch as the sixth-best Western.

## Plot

In 1913 Texas, Pike Bishop, the leader of a gang of aging outlaws, seeks to retire after a final robbery of silver from a railroad payroll office. Corrupt railroad agent Pat Harrigan has hired a posse of bounty hunters led by Pike's former partner Deke Thornton, who ambush and kill more than half of Bishop's gang in a bloody shootout, which also kills many innocent bystanders as Pike uses a serendipitous temperance union parade to shield their getaway.

Pike rides off with the only survivors: his close friend Dutch Engstrom, brothers Lyle and Tector Gorch, the inexperienced Angel, and a fifth man blinded and mortally wounded by buckshot, who Pike mercy-kills. The loot from the robbery turns out to be worthless steel washers planted by Harrigan. Needing money, they head for Mexico accompanied by the cantankerous Freddie Sykes and cross the Rio Grande to the rural village where Angel was born. The village elder warns them about General Mapache, a vicious Huertista officer in the Mexican Federal Army, who has been stealing food and animals from local villages to support his campaign against the forces of Pancho Villa.

Pike's gang ask the general for work at his headquarters in the town of Agua Verde. Angel spots his former lover Teresa in Mapache's arms and shoots her dead, angering the general and nearly getting them killed, but Pike defuses the situation. Mapache offers gold to the gang to rob a U.S. Army train so Mapache can resupply his army's dwindling stocks of ammunition and provide samples of American weapons to his German military adviser Commander Mohr.

Angel gives his share of the gold to Pike in return for sending one crate of rifles and ammunition to a band of peasant rebels opposed to Mapache. The holdup goes largely as planned until Thornton's posse turns up on the train the gang has robbed and chases them to the Mexican border. The robbers blow up a trestle bridge spanning the Rio Grande as the posse tries to cross, dumping the entire posse into the river, but the exhausted posse continues their pursuit.

Pike, anticipating that Mapache might double-cross him, hides the goods and has his men sell them to Mapache in separate amounts. However, Mapache learns from Teresa's mother that Angel stole some of the weapons and reveals this as Angel and Dutch deliver the last of the weapons. Angel desperately tries to escape, only to be captured and beaten. Mapache lets Dutch go after he states that Angel is a thief who deserves to be punished, and Dutch then tells Pike and the others what happened.

Sykes is wounded by Thornton's posse while securing spare horses. Dutch criticizes Thornton for working with the railroad, but Pike says Thornton "gave his word" to the railroad and must see it through. Dutch angrily declares, "That ain't what counts, it's who you give it to." Pike and the gang bury most of the gold and return to Agua Verde, where the townspeople and soldiers are drunkenly celebrating the weapons sale and Mapache is dragging Angel through town on a rope tied to the back of his car. Mapache refuses to sell Angel back to the gang, and after a period of reflection while visiting a brothel, Pike and the others arm themselves to rescue their friend by force.

Mapache initially agrees to release Angel, only to cut his throat at the last second. The gang instantly opens fire and guns down the general. While the nearby soldiers are frozen in shock, Pike calmly takes aim and kills Mohr. This begins a bloody gunfight that kills Pike, Dutch, the remaining gang members, Mohr's aide, every member of Mapache's staff, and most of the assembled troops.

Thornton arrives and finds Pike already dead. Thornton finds a loaded revolver on Pike's belt and takes it as a sign that the days of men like him are over. Feeling outdated and tired, Thornton allows the remaining posse members to greedily strip Pike and his men of their possessions before taking them back to Texas for the bounty, while he stays behind. After some time, Sykes arrives with the elder from Angel's village and a band of rebels, indicating that they caught up with the bounty hunters, avenged the gang's deaths, and buried them properly. Sykes invites Thornton to join the coming revolution against the Mexican government. Thornton smiles and rides off with them.

## Cast

## Production

### Development

In April 1965, producer Reno Carrell optioned an original story and screenplay by Walon Green and Roy Sickner, called The Wild Bunch.

In 1967, Warner Bros.-Seven Arts producers Kenneth Hyman and Phil Feldman were interested in having Sam Peckinpah rewrite and direct an adventure film called The Diamond Story. A professional outcast due to the production difficulties of his previous film, Major Dundee (1965), and his firing from the set of The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Peckinpah's stock had improved following his critically acclaimed work on the television film Noon Wine (1966).

At the time, William Goldman's screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had recently been purchased by 20th Century Fox. An alternative screenplay available at the studio was The Wild Bunch. It was quickly decided that The Wild Bunch, which had several similarities to Goldman's work, would be produced to beat Butch Cassidy to the theaters.

### Writing

By the fall of 1967, Peckinpah was rewriting the screenplay and preparing for production. The principal photography was shot entirely on location in Mexico, most notably at the Hacienda Ciénaga del Carmen (deep in the desert between Torreón and Saltillo, Coahuila) and on the Rio Nazas. Peckinpah's epic work was inspired by his hunger to return to films, the violence seen in Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), America's growing frustration with the Vietnam War, and what he perceived to be the utter lack of reality seen in Westerns up to that time. He set out to make a film which portrayed not only the vicious violence of the period but also the crude men attempting to survive the era. Multiple scenes attempted in Major Dundee, including slow motion action sequences (inspired by Akira Kurosawa's work in Seven Samurai (1954), characters leaving a village as if in a funeral procession, and the use of inexperienced locals as extras, would become fully realized in The Wild Bunch.

### Casting

Peckinpah considered many actors for the Pike Bishop role before casting William Holden, including Richard Boone, Sterling Hayden, Charlton Heston, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck, and James Stewart. Marvin actually accepted the role but pulled out after he was offered more money to star in Paint Your Wagon (1969).

Peckinpah's first two choices for the role of Deke Thornton were Richard Harris (who had co-starred in Major Dundee) and Brian Keith (who had worked with Peckinpah on The Westerner (1960) and The Deadly Companions (1961)). Harris was never formally approached; Keith was asked, but he turned it down. Robert Ryan was ultimately cast in the part after Peckinpah saw him in the World War II action movie The Dirty Dozen (1967). Other actors considered for the role were Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Ben Johnson (later cast as Tector Gorch), and Arthur Kennedy.

The role of Mapache went to Emilio Fernández, the Mexican film director, writer, actor, and friend of Peckinpah. Among those considered to play Dutch Engstrom were Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Alex Cord, Robert Culp, Sammy Davis Jr., Richard Jaeckel, Steve McQueen, and George Peppard. Ernest Borgnine was cast based on his performance in The Dirty Dozen (1967). Robert Blake was the original choice to play Angel, but he asked for too much money. Peckinpah was impressed with Jaime Sánchez in Sidney Lumet's film adaptation of The Pawnbroker and demanded that he be cast as Angel.

Stage actor Albert Dekker was cast as Harrigan the railroad detective. The Wild Bunch was his last film, as he died just months after its final scenes were completed. Bo Hopkins had only a few television credits on his resume when he played the part of Clarence "Crazy" Lee. Warren Oates played Lyle Gorch, having previously worked with Peckinpah on the TV series The Rifleman and his previous films Ride the High Country (1962) and Major Dundee (1965).

### Filming

The film was shot with the anamorphic process. Peckinpah and his cinematographer, Lucien Ballard, also made use of telephoto lenses, that allowed for objects and people in both the background and foreground to be compressed in perspective. The effect is best seen in the shots where the Bunch makes the walk to Mapache's headquarters to free Angel. As they walk forward, a constant flow of people passes between them and the camera; most of the people in the foreground are as sharply focused as the Bunch.

By the time filming wrapped, Peckinpah had shot 333,000 feet (101,000 m) of film with 1,288 camera setups. Lombardo and Peckinpah remained in Mexico for six months editing the picture. After initial cuts, the opening gunfight sequence ran 21 minutes. By cutting frames from specific scenes and intercutting others, they were able to fine-cut the opening robbery down to five minutes. The creative montage became the model for the rest of the film and would "forever change the way movies would be made".

Peckinpah stated that one of his goals for the movie was to give the audience "some idea of what it is to be gunned down". A memorable incident occurred, to that end, as Peckinpah's crew were consulting him on the "gunfire" effects to be used in the film. Not satisfied with the results from the squibs his crew had brought for him, Peckinpah became exasperated and finally hollered: "That's not what I want! That's not what I want!" He then grabbed a real revolver and fired it into a nearby wall. The gun empty, Peckinpah barked at his stunned crew: "THAT'S the effect I want!!"

He also had the gunfire sound effects changed for the film. Before, all gunshots in Warner Bros. movies sounded identical, regardless of the type of weapon being fired. Peckinpah insisted that each different type of firearm have its own specific sound effect when fired.

### Editing

The editing of the film is notable in that shots from multiple angles were spliced together in rapid succession, often at different speeds, placing greater emphasis on the chaotic nature of the action and the gunfights.

Lou Lombardo, having previously worked with Peckinpah on Noon Wine, was personally hired by the director to edit The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah had wanted an editor who would be loyal to him. Lombardo's youth was also a plus, as he was not bound by traditional conventions.

One of Lombardo's first contributions was to show Peckinpah an episode of the TV series Felony Squad he had edited in 1967. The episode, entitled "My Mommy Got Lost", included a slow motion sequence where Joe Don Baker is shot by the police. The scene mixed slow motion with normal speed, having been filmed at 24 frames per second but triple printed optically at 72 frames per second. Peckinpah was reportedly thrilled and told Lombardo: "Let's try some of that when we get down to Mexico!" The director would film the major shootouts with six cameras, operating at various film rates, including 24 frames per second, 30 frames per second, 60 frames per second, 90 frames per second, and 120 frames per second. When the scenes were eventually cut together, the action would shift from slow to fast to slower still, giving time an elastic quality never before seen in motion pictures up to that time.

Further editing was done to secure a favorable rating from the MPAA, which was in the process of establishing a new set of codes. Peckinpah and his editors cut the film to satisfy the new, expansive R-rating parameters which, for the first time, designated a film as being unsuitable for children. Without this new system in place, the film could not have been released with its explicit images of bloodshed.

## Themes

Critics of The Wild Bunch note the theme of the end of the outlaw gunfighter era. For example, the character Pike Bishop advises: "We've got to start thinking beyond our guns. Those days are closing fast." The Bunch lives by an anachronistic code of honor that is out of place in 20th-century society. Also, when the gang inspects Mapache's new automobile, they perceive it marks the end of horse travel, a symbol also in Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962) and The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970).

The violence that was much criticized in 1969 remains controversial. Peckinpah noted it was allegoric of the American war in Vietnam, the violence of which was nightly televised to American homes at supper time. He tried showing the gun violence commonplace to the historic western frontier period, rebelling against sanitized, bloodless television Westerns and films glamorizing gunfights and murder: "The point of the film is to take this façade of movie violence and open it up, get people involved in it so that they are starting to go in the Hollywood television predictable reaction syndrome, and then twist it so that it's not fun anymore, just a wave of sickness in the gut ... it's ugly, brutalizing, and bloody awful; it's not fun and games and cowboys and Indians. It's a terrible, ugly thing, and yet there's a certain response that you get from it, an excitement, because we're all violent people." Peckinpah used violence as a catharsis, believing his audience would be purged of violence by witnessing it explicitly on screen. He later admitted to being mistaken, observing that the audience came to enjoy rather than be horrified by his films' violence, which troubled him.

Betrayal is the secondary theme of The Wild Bunch. The characters suffer from their knowledge of having betrayed a friend and left him to his fate, thus violating their own honor code when it suits them ("\$10,000 cuts an awful lot of family ties"). However, Bishop says, "When you side with a man, you stay with him, and if you can't do that you're like some animal." Such oppositional ideas lead to the film's violent conclusion, as the remaining men find their abandonment of Angel intolerable. Bishop remembers his betrayals, most notably when he deserts Deke Thornton (in flashback) when the law catches up to them and when he abandons Crazy Lee at the railroad office after the robbery (ostensibly to guard the hostages). Critic David Weddle writes that "like that of Conrad's Lord Jim, Pike Bishop's heroism is propelled by overwhelming guilt and a despairing death wish."

## Release

The film opened on June 18, 1969, at the Pix theatre in Los Angeles and grossed \$39,200 in its first week. Produced on a budget of \$6 million, the film grossed \$10.5 million at the US box office in 1970 and another \$638,641 in the US on its 1995 restored box-office release, making a total of \$11,138,641. It was the 17th highest-grossing film of 1969.

### Versions

There have been several versions of the film:

- The original, 1969 European release is 145 minutes long, with an intermission (per the distributor's request, before the train robbery)
- The original, 1969 American release is 143 minutes long
- The second, 1969 American release is 135 minutes long, shortened to allow more screenings
- The 1995 re-release (labeled "The Original Director's Cut", available in home video) is 145 minutes long and identical to the 1969 European release

In 1993, Warner Bros. resubmitted the film to the MPAA ratings board prior to an expected re-release. To the studio's surprise, the originally R-rated film was re-rated NC-17, which delayed the release until the decision was appealed. The controversy was linked to 10 extra minutes added to the film, although none of this footage contained graphic violence. Warner Bros. trimmed some footage to decrease the running time to ensure additional daily screenings. When the restored film finally made it to the screen in March 1995, one reviewer noted:

> By restoring 10 minutes to the film, the complex story now fits together in a seamless way, filling in those gaps found in the previous theatrical release, and proving that Peckinpah was firing on all cylinders for this, his grandest achievement. ... And the one overwhelming feature that the director's cut makes unforgettable are the many faces of the children, whether playing, singing, or cowering, much of the reaction to what happens on-screen is through the eyes, both innocent and imitative, of all the children.

Almost all of the versions of the film include the missing scenes. Warner Bros. released a newly restored version in a two-disc special edition on January 10, 2006. It includes an audio commentary by Peckinpah scholars, two documentaries concerning the making of the film (one of them is the Oscar-nominated The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage), and never-before-seen outtakes.

## Critical reception

Vincent Canby began his review by calling the film "very beautiful and the first truly interesting American-made Western in years. It's also so full of violence—of an intensity that can hardly be supported by the story—that it's going to prompt a lot of people who do not know the real effect of movie violence (as I do not) to write automatic condemnations of it." He observed, "Although the movie's conventional and poetic action sequences are extraordinarily good and its landscapes beautifully photographed ... it is most interesting in its almost jolly account of chaos, corruption, and defeat". About the actors, he commented particularly on William Holden: "After years of giving bored performances in boring movies, Holden comes back gallantly in The Wild Bunch. He looks older and tired, but he has style, both as a man and as a movie character who persists in doing what he's always done, not because he really wants the money but because there's simply nothing else to do."

TIME also liked Holden's performance, describing it as his best since Stalag 17 (a 1953 film that earned Holden an Oscar), noting Robert Ryan gave "the screen performance of his career", and concluding that "The Wild Bunch contains faults and mistakes" (such as flashbacks "introduced with surprising clumsiness"), but "its accomplishments are more than sufficient to confirm that Peckinpah, along with Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Penn, belongs with the best of the newer generation of American filmmakers."

In a 2002 retrospective Roger Ebert, who "saw the original version at the world premiere in 1969, during the golden age of the junket, when Warner Bros. screened five of its new films in the Bahamas for 450 critics and reporters", said that, back then, he had publicly declared the film a masterpiece during the junket's press conference, prompted by comments from "a reporter from the Reader's Digest [who] got up to ask 'Why was this film ever made?'" He compared the film to Pulp Fiction: "praised and condemned with equal vehemence."

"What Citizen Kane was to movie lovers in 1941, The Wild Bunch was to cineastes in 1969," wrote film critic Michael Sragow, who added that Peckinpah had "produced an American movie that equals or surpasses the best of Kurosawa: the Gotterdammerung of Westerns".

Today, the film holds a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 8.8/10 based on reviews from 65 critics with its consensus stating, "The Wild Bunch is Sam Peckinpah's shocking, violent ballad to an old world and a dying genre".

The Wild Bunch was cited as cinematographer Roger Deakins's favorite film, and film director Kathryn Bigelow named it as one of her five favorite films. In the 2012 BFI poll for The Greatest Films of All Time, The Wild Bunch received 27 votes from critics and directors such as Michael Mann, Paul Schrader and Edgar Wright.

## Awards and nominations

Decades later the American Film Institute placed the film in several of its "100 Years" lists:

- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – No. 80
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – No. 69
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – No. 79
- AFI's 10 Top 10 – No. 6 Western

The film is ranked No. 94 on Empire magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of All Time. In 1999, the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant. In 2012, the Motion Picture Editors Guild listed The Wild Bunch as the 23rd best-edited film of all time based on a survey of its membership.

## Documentary

Sam Peckinpah and the making of The Wild Bunch were the subjects of the documentary The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage (1996) directed and edited by Paul Seydor. The documentary was occasioned by the discovery of 72 minutes of silent, black-and-white film footage of Peckinpah and company on location in northern Mexico during the filming of The Wild Bunch. Michael Sragow wrote in 2000 that the documentary was "a wonderful introduction to Peckinpah’s radically detailed historical film about American outlaws in revolutionary Mexico—a masterpiece that’s part bullet-driven ballet, part requiem for Old West friendship and part existential explosion. Seydor’s movie is also a poetic flight on the myriad possibilities of movie directing." Seydor and his co-producer Nick Redman were nominated in 1997 for the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject).

## Remake

In 2005, David Ayer was reported to be in final negotiations to direct and write a remake of The Wild Bunch. Jerry Weintraub would produce and Mark Vahradian would executive produce. The remake would be a modern reinterpretation of the original, involving heists, drug cartels and the CIA.

On January 19, 2011, it was announced by Warner Bros. that a remake of The Wild Bunch was in the works. Screenwriter Brian Helgeland was hired to develop a new script. The 2012 suicide of Tony Scott, who was scheduled to direct, put the project in limbo.

On May 15, 2013, The Wrap reported that Will Smith was in talks to star in and produce the remake. The new version would involve drug cartels and follows a disgraced DEA agent who assembles a team to go after a Mexican drug lord and his fortune. No director has been chosen, and a new screenwriter is being sought.

In 2015, a Hollywood insider website announced that Jonathan Jakubowicz was set to write and direct a remake. "Our sources also tell us that the remake will update the story to a contemporary setting, revolving around the CIA, dangerous drug cartels, and a thrilling heist against the backdrop of the Southern California-Mexico border. Jakubowicz will be working from previous drafts submitted by David Ayer and Brian Helgeland."

In 2018, it was announced that Mel Gibson would co-write and direct a new version of The Wild Bunch.

## See also

- List of American films of 1969
- Vigilante film

1969 film

United States National Film Registry films


Albany City Hall

Albany City Hall is the seat of government of the city of Albany, New York, United States. It houses the office of the mayor, the Common Council chamber, the city and traffic courts, as well as other city services. The present building was designed by Henry Hobson Richardson in the Romanesque style and opened in 1883 at 24 Eagle Street, between Corning Place (then Maiden Lane) and Pine Street. It is a rectangular three-and-a-half-story building with a 202-foot-tall (62 m) tower at its southwest corner. The tower contains one of the few municipal carillons in the country, dedicated in 1927, with 49 bells.

Albany's first city hall was the Stadt Huys (/ˈstæt ˈhaɪs/; Dutch for "city hall"); sometimes written Stadt Huis), built by the Dutch at what is now the intersection of Broadway and Hudson Avenue, probably in the 1660s, though possibly earlier. It was probably replaced around 1740 with a larger Stadt Huys. In 1754, it was the site of the Albany Congress, where Benjamin Franklin presented the Albany Plan of Union, the first proposal to unite the British American colonies. After the American Revolution brought independence, Albany was declared the state capital in 1797 and the state legislature met in city hall. In 1809 the Legislature opened the first state capitol and Albany's government moved in with it. Two decades later, the city purchased a plot of land at the eastern end of Washington Avenue, across Eagle Street from the capitol and moved its government into a new city hall designed by Philip Hooker that opened in 1832.

In 1880, Hooker's building was destroyed by fire and a new design by Richardson was commissioned. The cornerstone was laid by the local Masonic fraternity in 1881; the building was completed and opened two years later. Because of budget restrictions the original interior was simply designed, consisting chiefly of beaded board partitions, and thus not fireproof; it was entirely rebuilt in 1916-18 from designs by Albany architects Ogden & Gander. The city hall remains essentially as altered at that time, and the exterior is considered one of Richardson's finest works. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1972; it is also a contributing property to the Lafayette Park Historic District, listed six years later.

## Building

City Hall occupies the western half of the block with Eagle Street on the west, Lodge Street to the east, and Corning Place and Pine Street on the south and north. The land slopes gently down towards the Hudson River a half-mile (800 m) to the east-southeast, such that the building's rear foundation is exposed. The small Corning Park buffers the building from the Albany Masonic Temple to the east and some other smaller buildings on the block's northwest corner. Academy Park is to the northwest, and East Capitol Park to the southwest, with Washington Avenue (New York State Route 5) dividing them before it ends at the intersection with Eagle just in front of City Hall.

On all the other sides of the block the surrounding neighborhood is densely developed and urban, with primarily government, institutional and commercial buildings. Some of those buildings are also listed on the National Register. To the north, across Pine Street, is the New York Court of Appeals Building, where the state's highest court sits, with the old Albany County courthouse, now county offices, just to its north. Northwest, in Academy Park, is the Old Albany Academy Building, now headquarters of the Albany City School District. Looking west on Washington, the New York State Education Building is visible on the north a short distance away with the state capitol opposite. All, like City Hall, are also contributing properties to the Lafayette Park Historic District, listed on the Register in 1978.

### Exterior

The building is a load-bearing masonry design laid out in a rectangle, with a 202-foot (62 m) tall, Venetian-style tower, topped by a pyramidal roof, on the southwest corner, and smaller round towers on the northeast and southeast. The nine-by-six-bay main structure is three-and-a-half stories tall. Its exterior walls are rusticated Milford granite with Longmeadow brownstone trim. It is topped with a red tiled cross-gabled roof, hipped on the east-west axis, with a nested gabled projection on either end. On the north side of the cross-gable tall chimneys rise on either side of the main gable; a third, shorter chimney rises from the roofline south of the cross-gable

#### Main block

On the west (front) elevation, narrowing steps with wrought iron decorative handrails lead up to the main entrance, triply-recessed triple stone rounded archways, with the central one slightly larger. The archways are flanked by smooth stone columns topped by Corinthian capitals. The arches themselves are segmented, with decorative leaf patterns carved onto them. Each entrance has a double wooden door, with brass trimmings, including kick plate, and glass window with iron grille. At the springline is a piece of carved wood; the one on the central entrance is more ornate, just below it the words "City Hall" are set in brass letters on the entablature. Above each is a semicircular glass transom with ornate iron radial muntins, divided at the center by a fluted wooden panel. Affixed to the one on the central entrance is a brass version of the city's coat of arms and the number 24, in brass.

To either side is a two-paned recessed casement window with transom and brownstone surround. On the north side is a recessed triple window with transom, stone-mullioned and round-arched with splayed stones, and a similar brownstone surround rising from the brownstone water table that runs from either side of the main entrance. All first-story windows have flower boxes, planted during the season.

On the north profile, fenestration begins on the west with a window with the same treatment as the one just around the corner from it. Below it are two barred rectangular casement windows. East of it, the rest of the facade projects out slightly; two brownstone courses begin at street level at that point. They are interrupted by three paired recessed one-over-one double-hung sash windows, each immediately below a recessed triple narrow one-over-one double-hung sash topped with two casement lights. At street level below the easternmost of these four is a side entrance to the building, wooden double doors with barred upper windows and a lower panel. Next to the upper portion on either side is a decorative stone panel on the facade depicting a carved tree.

The east (rear) facade, facing Corning Park, has exclusively double-hung one-over-one sash on the ground floor, with the same treatment but covered with protective metal screening, beginning with a pair at the corner next to the tower. Next to the south is a triple narrow window, followed by two wider ones. Above them, on the first floor, all windows are single versions of the narrow kind seen on the tower, with a wooden panel replacing the lower light. Midway across the facade a small pavilion projects outward with a small metal gate at its northern corner; on its ground floor is a double pair of narrow windows, with a single large one at the south corner. The first story on the pavilion has wider sash windows.

Adjacent to the tower on the ground floor of the south facade are two screen-protected double windows similar to those on the opposite side except for the mullions being recessed as well. Above them, displaced to the east, are a pair of double recessed windows identical to others on the first story but with only one transom. To the west the facade again projects slightly, aligning with the end of the gable atop it. The easternmost bay is taken, only at ground level, with a recessed entryway featuring double wooden paneled doors with barred upper windows identical to those on the opposite side entrance.

To the west the ground story has three pairs of screened deeply recessed double-hung one-over-one sash that get progressively shorter as the ground slopes up. They culminate with a similar double-pane casement window at the corner with the smaller of the southwest towers. Above them are three cross-windows, their mullions more decorative engaged round smooth columns with ornate capitals, matched by smaller ones between the upper lights. On the edges of the surrounds, narrow smooth round engaged columns support decorative capitals between the windows. Above the casement window, next to the tower, on this story, is another narrow sash window with transom similar to those seen elsewhere on the building.

A projecting stringcourse sets off the second story. Above the entrance is a quadruple-arched loggia opening from the Common Council chambers. Decorative stone balustrades are at the base of each arch; divided by a group of four engaged smooth round stone columns rising from rusticated plinths topped by Corinthian capitals. The arches themselves are formed of one course of segmented brownstone topped by splayed blocks with a decorative cornice along the top and decorative stonework in a leaf pattern at the springline. Behind each arch is a double wooden door with eight square glass panes, divided by a stone mullion and topped by one square glass light and an arched one above, set in a plainer splayed-block arch.

On either side of the loggia is a recessed narrow one-over-one double-hung sash with a blind third pane above. A stone course sets off the arched transom above, framed by a splayed block arch. To the north is a similarly treated wider double window, its tympanum painted with an intricate sunburst design. Around the corner, on the north facade, fenestration of the second story begins with a similarly styled window. To its east is a large quadruple window that echoes the loggia, with the same surrounds around groups of three narrow sash windows topped by two separated panes and tripartite transom under the arches.

On the east, the third story fenestration starts past the tower with a double version of the triple-hung sash two-transom windows on the tower, going into the fourth story. Next is a narrow single version, with a narrower, smaller version above, then double-hung with the lowest of three transoms on the story above blind, filled with a wooden panel, followed by a tripled version, flanked by a single one and then a pair of narrow windows similar to those on the other side. Triple versions of the narrow triple-hung follow on both stories. On the ell, where the beltcourse is absent, adjacent to the southeast tower are two small double-hung sash, with recessed double casement windows in decorative stonework around the top of the tower itself. It and the ell are topped by a stringcourse and molded-looking cornice.

The beltcourse returns on the south facade of the ell, setting off a quadruple version of the narrow double-hung single-upper-light sash, with a splayed block granite mustache in the facade above. Next to the corner of the main block is a single iteration of the same window. On the main block is a triple arched window just like that on the facade opposite.

Another, identical beltcourse sets off the third story. On the front it has six narrow double double-hung, with the single light above. The lintels above the main window and the transoms both are decorated to appear dentilled. Above is a stone cornice decorated in a leaf pattern. At the north a small parapet rises, set off by a gargoyle and decorated with a floral pattern that extends below the beltcourse.

Five windows stretch across the gable front on the third story of the north facade. All are recessed double-hung sash with two upper lights, wide and single on the sides with three narrower doubles between them. Above is a triple-arched window, smaller than the others two stories below but treated similarly, except for the lack of trim above the arches. The gable is framed by a stone cornice, with decorative floral stonework at the corners and a rounded finial at the apex.

The east gable facade has on the lower story two sets of recessed double-hung sash flanked on either side by narrower versions, all three topped by transoms without any stone separator, rising from the upper of two stringcourses. Above them, in the apex, are two small recessed double-hung sash rising from a brownstone beltcourse, with the uppermost adjacent stones widening like a capital but flat and plain on the front. A wider brownstone course tops the windows. The gable has the same treatment as the north face.

The south gable face is identical to the one on the north facade opposite in fenestration and treatment. On the west, the top gable pierces the roof above two shingle-cut stone courses. The three central recessed double-hung one-over-one sash rise from a stone cornice in which three pierced quatrefoils have been cut in the stone beneath the windowsills. Two joined engaged Corinthian columns divide the central window from those in its flanks, which are in turn flanked with single versions of the column. All three windows have decorative stonework above the lintel; above them is a course of vertical blocks and a cornice that forms a splayed-block arch above the central window. Its tympanum is blind, decorated with sunburst artwork similar to that found below on the front facade.

That pattern also fills the gable apex; on the sides of the windows is a checkerboard pattern. Stone shields are affixed to either side; the one at the south has the city's coat of arms on it. The gable edge has the same decorative treatment as the other three.

On the roof there are several small skylights next to the eastern and northern gable. A larger one is located higher on the east pitch of the northern gable, with two similarly-sized on the south face of the main gable east of the southern cross-gable. Just east of the southwestern chimney is an 18-cell solar cell array; a 27-cell array is on the east of the main gable just below the apex.

#### Towers

At the northeast corner is an engaged round tower with five bays. Fenestration on the first story is three windows with similar treatment to those on the neighboring north facade, except with two double windows on either side of a triple, and another double where the tower meets the east facade. Below are double-hung one-over-one sash, again like those on the north facade but without the bars, one beneath each double and two beneath the triple. On its third story are a group of three double windows with a single square transom, except for the second where a third transom is located in a dormer front that rises from the molded cornice to pierce the tower's conical roof. Rounded finials are at the apex and corners of the dormer gable.

The southeast tower fenestration consists of small deeply recessed casement windows ascending in a spiral pattern. On its west side is a small porch, with a stone-shingled peaked roof supported by an octagonal smooth stone column with decorative capital. To its east is a blind window in a small upper bay flanked by engaged pilasters similar to the porch column. The porch shelters a wooden paneled door with modern metal handle. setting off a conical shingled stone roof topped on the tower by a rounded finial.

The largest tower, the 202-foot (62 m) southwest tower, is square. At the first story it has three double-hung sash topped with a single light on both faces, in slight vertical recesses that continue up the entire face. Above them are three double-hung one-over-one topped by tympanums filled with the diamond pattern at left and the triangular one in the other two. On the tower's southeast is a small, narrow round tower with no fenestration save crenellation.

Above the second story the main tower is crenellated as well. The smaller tower is topped with a small conical shingled roof, rising to a small finial, above the level of the main block's lower cross-gable; just below its bracketing are several small windows set in brownstone. Just above that roof is the clock face on all four faces of the tower, with a splayed surround.

The upper stage of the tower, above the clock face, is a brownstone belfry. It has three narrow double-crossed openings topped by splayed-block arches rising from a decorative cornice. At the corners grouped smooth round columns with Corinthian capitals support a dentilled cornice. The pyramidal stone shingled roof is topped with a small round finial.

### Interior

The main entrances open into a lobby with a polished stone floor on which a decorative diamond pattern surrounds the city seal. A gently arched passageway, with arched doorways (including that for the elevator), leads into the building's central atrium. There the square enclosed diamond pattern on the floor continues, with a small circle in the middle.

From both north and south, stairs ascend to the second story and descend to the ground floor. Flat curved arches supported by engaged pillars and topped with molding rise up on three sides to create a triforium. At the second story all have the blank shield design found on the exterior west facade's fourth-story windows. The staircases and the triforium both have railings of black painted metal with a brass handrail.

At the third story a stone balustrade replaces the arches, with some decorative carving on the cornice stone. Another metal railing, with intermittent decorative patterns, runs around the fourth floor, topped by gentle, wide arches. Both are lit by a single fixture on each side hanging from a chain. At the ceiling of the atrium is a cornice with decorative dentils.

Most of the rooms in City Hall are the offices of the mayor, city officials and departments. Albany's city council meets in a chamber just inside the loggia on the second story's west facade. Valances hang in the arches of the entryways, separated by two flat square engaged decorated wooden pilasters, just behind the wooden desk, carved with arches on the front echoing those on the wall behind, where the president of the 16-member council sits alongside the mayor and other officials during meetings. The other members sit at desks along the sides.

The floor is polished dark hardwood. A metal railing with brass handrail separates public viewing at the rear. The north and south walls are decorated with recessed wooden panels separated by pilasters with the same treatment as those on the west wall. They rise to a plain frieze topped by a decorative wooden cornice at the height of the separation between the upper and lower lights in the loggia windows. Above those lights, in the loggia windows, are recessed wooden panels. Decorative molding sets off a coffered ceiling from which a central chandelier is augmented by two fixtures hanging on chains over the desk at west and upward-pointing spotlights on the walls.

## Former city halls

Albany has had multiple buildings dedicated to being the seat of city government through its history; most have been replaced following fires. Historians disagree on details of many of the earlier structures, and when they were built.

### Stadt Huys

Albany's original city hall, the Stadt Huys, may have been built as early as 1635. Evidence from the journals of Wouter van Twiller, Director of New Netherland from 1633 to 1638, suggests that at least some type of punitory building was built on the site during his term. George Howell and Jonathan Tenney, in their book Bi-centennial History of Albany, cite reports from 1646 describing the building as a substantial (at least for its time) three-story structure, with the lower floor built of stone and used as a jail. By contrast, another Albany historian, Cuyler Reynolds, writes that the Stadt Huys was not built until 1673. Both historians agree that it stood at the northeast corner of today's Hudson Avenue and Broadway, the current site of the SUNY System Administration Building. The Stadt Huys officially became city hall when the Dongan Charter incorporated Albany as a city in 1686. A 1695 engraved map of Albany depicts the Stadt Huys at that location.

A new city hall was probably built on the site around 1740; historians at the New York State Museum (NYSM) put its completion date as the following year. The city government, quickly outgrowing the space, was able to secure constructionfunds from the provincial government. This building retained the Dutch name, even though it was new and the English had been in control of New York for more than 75 years. The NYSM describes the new Stadt Huys as a three-story brick structure, adding that it was "more substantial" than its predecessor. The new building was the third-largest in Albany, surpassed only by that era's local Dutch church and Fort Albany. The roof of the new structure was gabled and topped with a cupola and belfry. Howell and Tenney say the original Stadt Huys was in use for at least 160 years (meaning a replacement structure would not have been needed until 1795 at the earliest), which contradicts with accounts of the new Stadt Huys's construction in the 1740s.

In 1754, the Stadt Huys was the site of the Albany Congress where Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania presented the Albany Plan of Union, the first formal proposal to unite the British American colonies. The intent was to defend against aggressions of the French to the north rather than become independent from the British crown. It was never adopted by the British Parliament; later it was seen as an important precursor to the United States Constitution. A month prior to the meeting, Franklin published his Join, or Die political cartoon, a graphical representation of the plan.

During the Revolutionary War, City Hall was home to the Albany Committee of Correspondence (the political arm of the local revolutionary movement), which took over operation of city government in 1775 and eventually controlled all of Albany County (at that time the largest county in the colony, extending far past its current borders). Tories and prisoners of war were often held in the building with common criminals. Following the war, city hall was an occasional meeting place of the newly formed New York Legislature, in addition to being home to the city and county governments, jail, courts, and local registry.

In 1797 Albany was declared capital of the state and the legislature made City Hall its home until the first state capitol was opened in 1809. In an effort to move public buildings away from the bustling and expanding waterfront, the new capitol was located atop the State Street hill, directly in front of where the current building stands. City surveyor Simeon De Witt, in his 1794 city plan, marks this land as a public square; it had been dedicated for public purposes since the late 17th century. Also included on DeWitt's map are depictions of City Hall and the new city jail, located at State and Eagle Streets. In 1809, Albany city government moved with the Legislature into the new capitol and remained there until a new city hall was opened in 1832. The old Stadt Huys was demolished after an 1836 fire.

### 1832 city hall

In order to move city and county government out of the state capitol, in 1832 the city bought a plot of land to build on facing the public square opposite the capitol, on Eagle Street at the eastern end of Lion Street (later renamed Washington Avenue) from St. Peter's Church for \$10,295.95 (). A design competition for the new City Hall was won by Albany architect Philip Hooker and Boston architect John Kutts. Hooker was charged with integrating components of both architect's proposals into one coherent design. The cornerstone was laid by Mayor John Townsend in a Masonic ceremony in 1829. Construction was completed three years later at a cost of about \$92,000 ().

The design combined neoclassical and Greek Revival detailing, and was built of white marble quarried by inmates at Sing Sing prison, with an entrance porch supported by six Ionic columns. A large belvedere supported a dome that was later gilded. The principal rooms of the interior continued the monumental detailing of the exterior. A full-length statue of Alexander Hamilton by Robert Ball Hughes stood in the center of the upper hall, between the Court room and the Common Council Chamber. On one side of this hall was a bas-relief of DeWitt Clinton, with a view of a primitive Erie Canal boat in the distance, and on the opposite wall was a similar figure of Sir Walter Scott. Both of these panels were executed by William Coffee. This building, too, was destroyed by fire, in 1880.

## Current city hall

After the fire, Henry Hobson Richardson, then one of a team of architects working on the nearby state capitol, secured the commission for the replacement city hall after a limited competition between six architects and firms. The budget for the new city hall was \$185,000 (); Richardson's design came in just under that. The appointed public committee increased the budget to \$204,000 (\$) after granite was substituted for brownstone in the design. The new city hall design dates from the period regarded as Richardson's architectural peak. It was similar to others executed in his personal version of the Romanesque style. Architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock described city hall as "one of Richardson's most Romanesque designs" and the building's NRHP nomination adds that its "banded arches, rhythmic fenestration, bold expression of materials and corner placement of the tower are characteristic features of Richardson's work often to be repeated by his followers."

Except for the bold asymmetrical placement of the tower, a prime example of Richardson's disregard for architectural correctness known for being one of his best tower designs, the building is noted for its general simplicity and care for small details, especially its intricate carvings. The entranceway is a simple triple-arch loggia; other design elements on the front façade are limited to its windows and a quadruple-arch balcony off the Common Council chamber. It is flanked by multiple tiers of relief sculpture and gargoyles. Most of the stonecutters brought to Albany to work on the capitol were later hired to do the sculptural details on City Hall.

Many elements of the exterior design are representations of interior functionality. Because the Common Council chamber is located on the second floor (above the entrance), that story is the same height as the first-floor entrance hall. The tower is essentially windowless because it was meant to be the city archive; a round staircase extends up the southeast corner of the tower for access. The short tower on the building's southeast corner was originally meant to be the transition between city hall and the never-built jail, complete with a "bridge of sighs" to transport inmates straight from their cells to courtrooms in city hall.

Due to lack of funds at the time (the building's initial budget doubled, ending up at \$325,000 () including furnishings), Richardson devoted most of his efforts to the building's exterior. The Times Union wrote later, "There wasn't enough money for Richardson to do the job as thoroughly as he would have liked. He said in his writing that if there wasn't sufficient money, he'd rather do it right on the outside and leave it to a future generation to finish the interior. The interior was finished by city architects a good 30 years after Richardson built it." Those "city architects" were Ogden and Gander who designed the alterations in 1916 that were completed in 1918. The mayor's office is on the first floor of the tower, with a painting of the city's first mayor, Pieter Schuyler; the Council chamber and offices are on the building's second floor, and the city clerk's office is on the second floor of the tower.

Under the leadership of William Gorham Rice, an Albany native who had run for mayor and served in some appointed state positions, in 1927 a carillon was added to the tower; it contained 60 bells (though it produced only 47 different notes, since the top 13 notes each had two bells) made by John Taylor & Co in England. Financed by public donations (from over 25,000 people), it cost \$63,000 () and was the first municipal carillon in the United States. Six decades later Mayor Thomas Whalen III had it restored, replacing 30 bells, removing the doubles, and adding two notes to its repertoire. The 49 bells weigh 27 short tons (24,000 kg) in total. The largest is 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm) in diameter and weighs 10,953 pounds (4,968 kg). The carillon is still in use and is played during concerts several times a week.

The clock faces on the tower were added in the 1920s, possibly around the same time as the carillon. An 1897 image of the city hall shows the tower without the clock faces. City Hall was added to the NRHP on September 4, 1972.

## See also

- List of mayors of Albany, New York
- National Register of Historic Places listings in Albany, New York
- Statue of Philip Schuyler, in front of city hall, slated to be removed as he was a slaveholder

Municipal government building in capital city of U.S. state of New York

Buildings and structures in Albany, New York

City and town halls on the National Register of Historic Places in New York (state)

Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in New York (state)

National Register of Historic Places in Albany, New York

Richardsonian Romanesque architecture in New York (state)


Witold Pilecki

Witold Pilecki (13 May 1901 – 25 May 1948; ; codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold) was a Polish World War II cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader.

As a youth, Pilecki joined Polish underground scouting; in the aftermath of World War I, he joined the Polish militia and, later, the Polish Army. He participated in the Polish-Soviet War which ended in 1921. In 1939, he participated in the unsuccessful defense of Poland against the German invasion and shortly afterward, joined the Polish resistance, co-founding the Secret Polish Army resistance movement. In 1940, Pilecki volunteered to allow himself to be captured by the occupying Germans in order to infiltrate the Auschwitz concentration camp. At Auschwitz, he organized a resistance movement that eventually included hundreds of inmates, and he secretly drew up reports detailing German atrocities at the camp, which were smuggled out to Home Army headquarters and shared with the Western Allies. After eventually escaping from Auschwitz in April 1943, Pilecki fought in the Warsaw Uprising of August–October 1944. Following its suppression, he was interned in a German prisoner-of-war camp. After the communist takeover of Poland, he remained loyal to the London-based Polish government-in-exile. In 1945, he returned to Poland to report to the government-in-exile on the situation in Poland. Before returning, Pilecki wrote Witold's Report about his Auschwitz experiences, anticipating that he might be killed by Poland's new communist authorities. In 1947, he was arrested by the secret police on charges of working for "foreign imperialism" and, after being subjected to torture and a show trial, was executed in 1948.

His story, inconvenient to the Polish communist authorities, remained mostly unknown for several decades; one of the first accounts of Pilecki's mission to Auschwitz was given by Polish historian Józef Garliński, himself a former Auschwitz inmate who emigrated to Britain after the war, in Fighting Auschwitz: The Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp (1975). Several monographs appeared in subsequent years, particularly after the fall of communism in Poland facilitated research into his life by Polish historians.

## Biography

### Early life

Witold Pilecki was born on 13 May 1901 in the town of Olonets, Karelia, in the Russian Empire. He was a descendant of a Polish-speaking noble family (szlachta) of the Leliwa coat of arms. His ancestors had been deported to Russia from their home in Lithuania (former Nowogródek Voivodeship region, now in Belarus) for participating in the January 1863–64 Uprising, for which a major part of their estate was confiscated. Witold was one of five children of forest inspector Julian Pilecki and Ludwika Osiecimska.

In 1910, Witold moved with his mother and siblings to Wilno, to attend a Polish school there, while his father remained in Olonets. In Wilno, Pilecki attended a local school and joined the underground Polish Scouting and Guiding Association (Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego, ZHP).

Following the outbreak of World War I, in 1916 Pilecki was sent by his mother to a school in the Russian city of Oryol, located safer in the East than Wilno. There he attended a gymnasium (secondary school) and founded a local chapter of the ZHP.

### Polish–Soviet War

In 1918, following the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, Pilecki returned to Wilno (at that time part of the newly independent Polish Second Republic) and joined the ZHP section of the Self-Defence of Lithuania and Belarus, a paramilitary formation under Major General Władysław Wejtko. The militia disarmed the passing German troops and took up positions to defend the city from a looming attack by the Soviet Red Army. After Wilno fell to Bolshevik forces on 5 January 1919, Pilecki and his unit resorted to partisan warfare behind Soviet lines. He and his comrades then retreated to Białystok, where Pilecki enlisted as a szeregowy (private) in Poland's newly established Volunteer Army. He took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921, serving under Captain Jerzy Dąbrowski. He fought in the Kiev offensive (1920) and as part of a cavalry unit defending the then-Polish city of Grodno. On 5 August 1920, Pilecki joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment [pl] and fought in the crucial Battle of Warsaw and in the Rūdninkai Forest [lt]. Pilecki later took part in the Vilna offensive and briefly served in the ongoing Polish–Lithuanian War as a member of the October 1920 Żeligowski's Mutiny.

### Interwar years

By the conclusion of Polish-Soviet War in March 1921, Pilecki was promoted to the rank of plutonowy (corporal), becoming a non-commissioned officer. Shortly afterward, Pilecki was transferred to the army reserves, completing courses required for a non-commissioned officer rank at the Cavalry Reserve Officers' Training School in Grudziądz. He went on to complete his secondary education (matura) later that same year. He briefly enrolled with the Faculty of Fine Arts at Stefan Batory University but was forced to abandon his studies in 1924 due to both financial issues and the declining health of his father. In July 1925, Pilecki was assigned to the 26th Lancer Regiment with the rank of Chorąży (ensign). Pilecki would be promoted to podporucznik (second lieutenant, with seniority from 1923) the following year. Also in September 1926, Pilecki became the owner of his family's ancestral estate, Sukurcze, in the Lida District of the Nowogródek Voivodeship. In 1931, he married Maria Ostrowska [pl]. They had two children, born in Wilno over the next two years: Andrzej and Zofia [pl]. Pilecki actively supported the local farming community. He was also an amateur poet and painter. He organized the Krakus Military Horsemen Training program in 1932 and was appointed to command the 1st Lida Military Training Squadron, which in 1937 was placed under the Polish 19th Infantry Division. In 1938, Pilecki received the Silver Cross of Merit for his activities.

### World War II

#### Polish September Campaign

With Polish-German tensions growing in mid-1939, Pilecki was mobilized as a cavalry platoon commander on 26 August 1939. He was assigned to the 19th Infantry Division under Major General Józef Kwaciszewski, part of the Army Prusy and his unit took part in heavy fighting against the advancing Germans during the invasion of Poland. The 19th Division was almost completely destroyed following a clash with the German forces on the night of 5/6 September at the Battle of Piotrków Trybunalski. Its remains were incorporated into the 41st Infantry Division, which was withdrawn to the southeast toward Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) and the Romanian bridgehead. In the 41st Division, Pilecki served as divisional second-in-command of its cavalry detachment, under Major Jan Włodarkiewicz. He and his men destroyed seven German tanks, shot down one aircraft, and destroyed two more on the ground. On 17 September, the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland, which worsened the already desperate situation of the Polish forces. On 22 September, the 41st Division suffered a major defeat and capitulated. Włodarkiewicz and Pilecki were among the many soldiers who did not follow the order of Commander-in-Chief General Edward Śmigły-Rydz to retreat through Romania to France, instead opting to stay underground in Poland.

#### Resistance

On 9 November 1939 in Warsaw, Major Włodarkiewicz, Second Lieutenant Pilecki, Second Lieutenant Jerzy Maringe, Jerzy Skoczyński, and brothers Jan and Stanisław Dangel founded the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP), one of the first underground organizations in Poland. Włodarkiewicz became its leader, while Pilecki became TAP's organizational head as it expanded to cover Warsaw, Siedlce, Radom, Lublin, and other major cities in central Poland. As cover, Pilecki worked as manager of a cosmetics storehouse. From 25 November 1939 until May 1940, he was TAP's inspector and chief of staff. From August 1940, he headed its 1st branch (organization and mobilization).

TAP was based on Christian ideological values. While Pilecki wanted to avert a religious mission so as not to alienate potential allies, Włodarkiewicz blamed Poland's defeat on its failure to create a Catholic nation and wanted to remake the country by appealing to right-wing groups. In the spring of 1940, Pilecki saw that Włodarkiewicz's views had become more anti-semitic and that he had put ultranationalist dogma into their newsletter, Znak [pl]; Włodarkiewicz had also entered into talks about a merger with the far-right underground, including a group that had offered Nazi Germany a Polish puppet government. To stop him, Pilecki went to Colonel Stefan Rowecki, chief of a rival resistance group, the Union of Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej, ZWZ), which called for equal rights for Jews, gathered intelligence on German atrocities, and delivered it by courier to the Western Allies in an attempt to gain their involvement. The ZWZ had alerted the Polish Government-in-Exile that the Germans were inciting Polish hatred against the Jews, and that this might lead to the rise of a Polish Quisling.

Pilecki called for TAP to submit to Rowecki's authority, but Włodarkiewicz refused and issued a manifesto that the future Poland had to be Christian, based on national identity, and that those who opposed the idea should be "removed from our lands". Pilecki refused to swear the proposed oath. In August, Włodarkiewicz announced at a TAP meeting that they would, after all, join the mainstream underground with Rowecki – and that it has been proposed that Pilecki should infiltrate the Auschwitz concentration camp. Little was known about how the Germans ran the then-new camp, which was thought to be an internment camp or large prison rather than a death camp. Włodarkiewicz said it was not an order but an invitation to volunteer, though Pilecki saw it as a punishment for refusing to back Włodarkiewicz's ideology. Nevertheless he agreed, which years later led to him being described in many sources as having volunteered to infiltrate Auschwitz.

#### Auschwitz

Pilecki was one of 2,000 men arrested on 19 September 1940. He used the identity documents of Tomasz Serafiński, who had been mistakenly assumed to be dead. Two backstories exist purporting to explain how Pilecki actually found himself in Auschwitz. In one version, he allowed himself to be captured by the occupying Germans in one of their Warsaw street round-ups, in order to infiltrate the camp. In the second version, he did that in the apartment of Eleonora Ostrowska, at ulica Wojska Polskiego (Polish Army Street) during a building search. Afterward, along with 1,705 other prisoners, between 21 and 22 September 1940, Pilecki reached Auschwitz where, under Serafiński's name, he was assigned prisoner number 4859. In autumn of 1941 he learnt that he had been promoted to porucznik (first lieutenant) by people "far away in the outside world in Warsaw".

While in various slave labor kommandos and surviving pneumonia at Auschwitz, Pilecki organized an underground Military Organization Union (Związek Organizacji Wojskowej, ZOW). Its tasks were to improve the morale of the inmates, provide news from outside the camp, distribute extra food and clothing to its members, set up intelligence networks, and train detachments to take over the camp in the event of a relief attack. ZOW was organized as secret cells, each of five members. Over time, many smaller underground organizations at Auschwitz eventually merged with ZOW.

As part of his duties, Pilecki secretly drew up reports and sent them to Home Army headquarters with the help of inmates that had been released or escapees. The first dispatch, delivered in October 1940, described the camp and the ongoing extermination of inmates via starvation and brutal punishments; it was used as the basis of a Home Army report on "The terror and lawlessness of the occupiers". Further dispatches of Pilecki's were likewise smuggled out by individuals who managed to escape from Auschwitz. The reports' purpose may have been to get the Home Army command's permission for ZOW to stage an uprising to liberate the camp; however, no such response came from the Home Army. In 1942, Pilecki's resistance movement was also using a home-made radio transmitter to broadcast details on the number of arrivals and deaths in the camp and the conditions of the inmates. The secret radio station was built over seven months using smuggled parts. It broadcast from the camp until the autumn of 1942, when it was dismantled by Pilecki's men after concerns that the Germans might discover its location because of "one of our fellows' big mouth". The information provided by Pilecki was a principal source of intelligence on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. Pilecki hoped that either the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp, or that the Home Army would organize an assault on it from outside.

The Camp Gestapo under SS-Untersturmführer Maximilian Grabner redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, killing many of them. To avoid the worst outcome, Pilecki decided to break out of the camp with the hope of convincing Home Army leaders that a rescue attempt was a valid option. On the night of 26–27 April 1943 Pilecki was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, and he and two comrades managed to force open a metal door, overpower a guard, cut the telephone line, and escape outside the camp perimeter. They left the SS guards in the woodshed, barricaded from outside. Before escaping they cut an alarm wire. They headed east, and after several hours crossed into the General Government, taking with them documents stolen from the Germans. The men fled on foot to the village of Alwernia where they were helped by a priest, and then on to Tyniec where locals assisted them. Later, they reached the Polish resistance safe house near Bochnia, owned, coincidentally, by commander Tomasz Serafiński—the very man whose identity Pilecki had adopted for his cover in Auschwitz. At one point during the journey, German soldiers attempted to stop Pilecki, firing at him as he fled; several bullets passed through his clothing, while one wounded him without hitting either bones or vital organs.

#### Outside Auschwitz

After several days as a fugitive, Pilecki made contact with units of the Home Army. In June 1943, in Nowy Wiśnicz, Pilecki drafted a report on the situation in Auschwitz. It was buried at the farm where he was staying and was only revealed after his death. In August 1943, back in Warsaw, Pilecki started preparing Witold's Report (Raport W), which focused on the Auschwitz underground. It covered three main topics: ZOW and its members; Pilecki's experiences; and to a lesser extent, the extermination of prisoners, including Jews. Pilecki's intent in writing it was to persuade the Home Army to liberate the camp's prisoners. However, the Home Army command judged such an attack would fail. Even if the initial attack were successful, the resistance lacked sufficient transport capabilities, supplies, and the shelter that would be required for the rescued inmates. The Soviet Red Army, despite being within attacking distance of the camp, showed no interest in a joint effort with the Home Army and the ZOW to free it.

Shortly after rejoining the resistance, Pilecki became a member of the Kedyw sabotage unit, using the pseudonym Roman Jezierski. He also joined a secret anti-communist organization, NIE. On 19 February 1944 he was promoted to cavalry captain (rotmistrz). Until becoming involved in the Warsaw Uprising, Pilecki continued coordinating ZOW and Home Army activities and providing ZOW with what limited support he could.

In Auschwitz, Pilecki had met the author Igor Newerly, whose Jewish wife, Barbara, was hiding in Warsaw. The Newerlys had been working with Janusz Korczak to try to save Jewish lives. Pilecki gave Barbara Newerly money from the Polish resistance, which she passed on to several Jewish families whom she and her husband protected. He also gave her money to pay off her own szmalcownik, or blackmailer, who said he was Jewish and threatened to report her to the Gestapo. The blackmailer disappeared, with Jack Fairweather concluding that "it is likely that Witold arranged for his execution".

#### Warsaw Uprising

When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on 1 August 1944, Pilecki volunteered for service with Warszawianka Company [pl] of Kedyw's Chrobry II Battalion. Initially, he served as a common soldier in the northern city centre, without revealing his rank to his superiors. After many officers were killed in the early days of the uprising, Pilecki revealed his true identity and accepted command of the 1st "Warszawianka" Company deployed in Warsaw's Śródmieście (downtown) district. After the fall of the uprising, which ended on 2 October that year, he was captured and taken prisoner by the Germans. He was sent to Oflag VII-A, a prison-of-war camp for Polish officers located north of Murnau, Bavaria, where he remained until the prisoners were liberated on 29 April 1945.

### After the war

In July 1945, Pilecki joined the military intelligence division of the Polish II Corps under Lieutenant General Władysław Anders in Ancona, Italy. In October 1945, as relations between the government-in-exile and the Soviet-backed regime of Boleslaw Bierut kept deteriorating, Pilecki was ordered by Anders and his intelligence chief, Lieutenant Colonel Stanisław Kijak, to return to Poland and report on the prevailing military and political situation under Soviet occupation. By December 1945 he had arrived in Warsaw and begun organizing an intelligence gathering network. As the NIE organization had been disbanded, Pilecki recruited former ZOW and TAP members and continued sending information to the government-in-exile.

To maintain his cover identity, Pilecki lived under various assumed names and changed jobs frequently. He worked as a jewellery salesman, a bottle label painter, and as the night manager of a construction warehouse. However, in July 1946 he was informed that his identity had been uncovered by the Ministry of Public Security. Anders ordered him to leave Poland, but Pilecki refused. In early 1947 his superiors rescinded the order.

Arrested on 8 May 1947 by the communist authorities, Pilecki was tortured, but in order to protect other operatives, he did not reveal any sensitive information. His case was supervised by Colonel Roman Romkowski. A show trial, chaired by Lieutenant Colonel Jan Hryckowian [pl], took place on 3 March 1948. Pilecki was charged with illegal border crossing, use of forged documents, not enlisting with the military, carrying illegal arms, espionage for Anders, espionage for "foreign imperialism" (government-in-exile), and planning to assassinate several officials of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland. Pilecki denied the assassination charges, as well as espionage, although he admitted to passing information to the II Corps, of which he considered himself an officer and thus claimed that he was not breaking any laws. He pleaded guilty to the other charges. He was sentenced to death on 15 May with three of his comrades. Pleas for pardon from a number of Auschwitz survivors were ignored; one of their recipients was Polish Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz, also an Auschwitz survivor. Cyrankiewicz, who had already testified at the trial, instead wrote that Pilecki must be treated harshly as an "enemy of the state". Subsequently, on 25 May 1948, Pilecki was executed by Piotr Śmietański with a shot to the back of the head at the Mokotów Prison in Warsaw. Several of Pilecki's affiliates were also arrested and tried around the same time, with at least three executed as well; a number of others received death sentences that were changed to prison sentences. Pilecki's burial place has never been found, though it is thought to be in Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.

## Legacy

Pilecki's life has been a subject of several monographs. The first in English was Józef Garliński's Fighting Auschwitz: The Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp (1975), followed by M.R.D. Foot's Six Faces of Courage (1978). The first in Polish was the Rotmistrz Pilecki (1995) by Wiesław Jan Wysocki, followed by Ochotnik do Auschwitz. Witold Pilecki 1901–1948 (2000) by Adam Cyra. In 2010, Italian historian Marco Patricelli wrote a book about Witold Pilecki, Il volontario (2010), which received the Acqui Award of History that year. In 2012, Pilecki's Auschwitz diary was translated into English by Garliński and published under the title The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery. Poland's Chief Rabbi, Michael Schudrich, wrote in the foreword to a 2012 English translation of Pilecki's report: "When God created the human being, God had in mind that we should all be like Captain Witold Pilecki, of blessed memory." Historian Norman Davies wrote in the introduction to the same translation: "If there was an Allied hero who deserved to be remembered and celebrated, this was a person with few peers." More recently Pilecki was the subject of Adam J. Koch's 2018 book A Captain’s Portrait: Witold Pilecki – Martyr for Truth and Jack Fairweather's 2019 book The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero Who Infiltrated Auschwitz, the latter a winner of the Costa Book Award.

From the 1990s, following the fall of communism in Poland and Pilecki's subsequent rehabilitation, he has been a subject of popular discourse. A number of institutions, monuments, and streets in Poland have been named after him. In 1995, he was awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta, and in 2006, the highest Polish decoration, the Order of the White Eagle. On 6 September 2013, the Minister of National Defence announced his promotion to colonel. In 2012, Powązki Cemetery was partly excavated in an unsuccessful effort to find his remains.

In 2016, The Pilecki Family House Museum (Dom Rodziny Pileckich) was established in Ostrów Mazowiecka; it opened officially in 2019, but its permanent exhibition is still being prepared, with public opening planned for May 2022. The year 2017 saw the founding of the Pilecki Institute, a Polish government institution commemorating persons who helped Polish victims of war crimes and crimes against peace or humanity in the years 1917–1990.

The 2006 film Śmierć rotmistrza Pileckiego [pl] ("The Death of Cavalry Captain Pilecki"), directed by Ryszard Bugajski, presents Pilecki as an ethically flawless man facing unfounded accusations. The narrative structure is reminiscent of a saint's martyrology, with belief in God replaced by belief in Country.

A 2015 film, Pilecki [pl], by Marcin Kwaśny portrays Pilecki as an independence-movement saint. The sacralization is achieved by recounting verified historical facts, along with dramatized scenes. The film shows Pilecki performing deeds impossible for an ordinary man, while keeping faith with his country even under the direst torture.

Polish underground resistance soldier, World War II concentration camp resistance leader

Commanders of the Order of Polonia Restituta

People executed by the Polish People's Republic

People from the Russian Empire of Polish descent

Polish military personnel of World War II

Recipients of the Cross of Valour (Poland)

Recipients of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland)

Recipients of the Silver Cross of Merit (Poland)

World War II prisoners of war held by Germany