page_title: Witold Pilecki
hierarchical_section_title: Witold Pilecki
caption_attribution_description: Polski: rtm. Witold Pilecki 1901-1948 (Fot. została pokolorowana.)
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: Witold Pilecki (13 May 1901 – 25 May 1948; [ˈvitɔlt piˈlɛt͡skʲi]; codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold) 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 (Armia Krajowa). 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. Pilecki later fought in the Warsaw Uprising from August to October 1944. He remained loyal to the London-based Polish government-in-exile after the communist takeover of Poland. In 1947, he was arrested by the secret police on charges of working for "foreign imperialism" (referring to his work for the government-in-exile). Pilecki was executed after a show trial in 1948. The story of Pilecki's mission in Auschwitz was told in Fighting Auschwitz (1975)  by emigre Polish historian Józef Garliński, himself a former Auschwitz inmate. Information about his exploits and fate was suppressed by Poland's communist regime until democracy returned to Poland in 1989. Pilecki's story did not become widely known until after the 1990s.
  Pilecki is now considered "one of the greatest wartime heroes". Poland's Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich writes in The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery: "When God created the human being, God had in mind that we should all be like Captain Witold Pilecki, of blessed memory." British historian Norman Davies writes: "If there was an Allied hero who deserved to be remembered and celebrated, this was a person with few peers." Ryszard Schnepf, Polish ambassador to the United States, described Pilecki as a "diamond among Poland's heroes" and "the highest example of Polish patriotism" in 2013.
caption: Pilecki in a colorized pre-1939 photo
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