page_title: Witold Pilecki
section_title: Communist Poland
hierarchical_section_title: Witold Pilecki / Communist Poland
caption_attribution_description: Photos of Pilecki from Warsaw's Mokotow prison (1947)
context_page_description: Witold Pilecki was a Polish cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader who volunteered to be embedded in Auschwitz, among other exploits. Put to death by the soviets in 1947, his incredible heroism and story were suppressed and lost, only to be rediscovered in fairly recent times. He served as a cavalry officer in the Polish Army in the Polish–Soviet War and World War II. Pilecki was also a co-founder of the Secret Polish Army resistance group and later a member of the Home Army. He was the author of Witold's Report, the first comprehensive intelligence report on the atrocities committed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Pilecki was a Catholic and a Polish patriot who viewed his struggle as a moral and patriotic duty.
  During World War II, Pilecki volunteered for a Polish resistance operation that involved being imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp in order to gather intelligence. At Auschwitz, he organized a resistance movement within the camp which eventually numbered in the hundreds, and secretly sent messages to the Western Allies detailing Nazi atrocities at the camp. He escaped in April 1943 after nearly 2½ years of imprisonment.
context_section_description: In July 1945, Pilecki left Murnau and was reassigned to the military intelligence division of the Polish II Corps under General Władysław Anders in Ancona, Italy. While stationed there, Pilecki began writing a monograph on his experiences at Auschwitz.
  In October 1945, as relations between the Polish government-in-exile and the Soviet-backed regime of Boleslaw Bierut deteriorated, Pilecki was ordered by General Anders and his intelligence chief, Lt. Colonel Stanislaw Kijak, to return to Poland and report on the prevailing military and political situation under Soviet-occupation.
  Pilecki arrived in Warsaw in December 1945 and proceeded to begin organizing an intelligence gathering network, which included several wartime associates from Auschwitz and the Secret Polish Army (TAP).
  To maintain his cover identity, Pilecki lived under various assumed names and changed jobs frequently. He would work as a jewelry salesman, a bottle label painter and as night manager of a construction warehouse. Nevertheless, Pilecki was informed in July 1946 that his actual identity had been uncovered by the MBP. He was ordered to leave the country, but he refused to do so.
  Pilecki provided Anders and the Polish government-in-exile with an intelligence report on the Kielce pogrom; he referred to it as "a tragedy" in which a Polish mob and local officials murdered 37 Jews.
caption: Photos of Pilecki from Mokotów Prison (1947)
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