Another Polish Hero



     Today, we examine the life of a Polish hero. There are thousands of Polish heroes because Poland, in spite of being the reason for the West going to war against Hitler, was not liberated until 1993 when the last Russian forces departed. Poland’s tragedy was this man’s tragedy as he fought against the black Fascists–The Nazis and then the Red Fascists–the Communists.

He Volunteered to Go to Auschwitz
Real Heroes: Witold Pilecki
Lawrence W. Reed




To label Pilecki a “hero” seems hopelessly inadequate.



To label Pilecki a “hero” seems hopelessly inadequate.


Hitler and Stalin secretly agreed in August 1939 to divide Poland between them. On September 1, the Nazis attacked the country from the west, and two weeks later, the Soviets invaded from the east. The world was at war again — and so was Pilecki.

An overwhelmed Warsaw surrendered on September 27, but Polish resistance never ceased. Together, Pilecki and Jan Wlodarkiewicz cofounded the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska) in early November. They and other elements of a growing underground movement carried out numerous raids against both Nazi and Soviet forces. In September 1940, Pilecki proposed a daring plan that in hindsight appears nearly unimaginable: he would arrange to be arrested in the hope that the Nazis, instead of executing him, might send him to the Auschwitz camp where he could gather information and form a resistance group from the inside.

If he could survive arrest, Pilecki figured, Auschwitz would likely be where the Nazis would incarcerate him. It was nearby, and many Polish resistance fighters were imprisoned there. It wasn’t yet the death camp for the Jews of Europe that it would soon become, but there were murmurings of executions and brutality that the Polish resistance wanted to investigate so that they could inform the world.

On September 19 in Warsaw, Pilecki kissed his beloved wife and two young children goodbye (both of whom are still alive today). Equipped with forged identity papers and a new name, he walked into a Nazi roundup of some 2,000 civilians. Two days and a few beatings later, he was Auschwitz inmate number 4859.



Fired by a determination that almost defies description, Pilecki made the most of every opportunity that his 30-month imprisonment at Auschwitz presented. Despite bouts of stomach ailments, typhus and pneumonia, lice infestations, backbreaking toil hauling rocks, extremes of heat and cold, and relentless hunger and cruelties at the hands of German guards, he formed an underground resistance group, the Union of Military Organization (Zwiazek Organizacji Wojskowej, ZOW). His initial reports of events and conditions within Auschwitz were smuggled out and reached Britain in November 1940, just two months after his detention began. Using a radio transmitter in 1942 that he and his fellow ZOW conspirators built, he broadcast information that convinced the Western Allies that the Nazis were engaged in genocide on an unprecedented scale. What became known as “Witold’s Report” was the first comprehensive account of the Holocaust from a firsthand witness.


Are you wondering why you’ve never heard of this man before?



If this were the end of the story, Witold Pilecki would already be a major figure in the history of World War II. Incredibly, there’s still more to tell — and it’s every bit as stunning as what you’ve read so far.




   The Red Army did nothing to aid the Poles as Stalin believed, correctly, that the Poles fighting in Warsaw were the same ones who would fight against the Communist takeover. He let the Germans kill them for him. Stalin had done his part by killing  many potential enemies when the USSR occupied part of Poland from 1939-1941 in the Katyn Massacre.

Still, there’s more.



In May 1947 — two years to the day after Nazi Germany capitulated — Witold Pilecki’s cover was blown. He was arrested and tortured for months before a sham public trial in May 1948, where he was found guilty of espionage and given a death sentence.


Are you wondering why you’ve never heard of this man before?

For decades, information about Pilecki was kept hidden by the leaders of the postwar, Soviet-installed regime. They couldn’t recount his anti-Nazi activities without completing the story and telling of his anticommunist work as well. With the release in recent years of previously classified or suppressed documents, including Pilecki’s own reports in their entirety, his superhuman exploits are finally becoming known around the world. (At this writing, American film producer David Aaron is working on a movie about Pilecki’s life, slated for release in 2016.)





    Poland was ravaged by the Communists at the same time that North American intellectuals were promoting Communism as the “inevitable wave of the future.” The paradox inherent in all this nonsense is that, if the Russian Communists had arrived, the professors would have been the first to die. This is not an exaggeration. This scenario was repeated in Germany, the Baltic countries, South Korea and all the European countries which ended up behind the Iron Curtain.

Government Job or Respect–Which’ll It Be?
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson, Ph.D.
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies


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