Witold Pilecki (; 13 May 190125 May 1948), known by the codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh and 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 defence of Poland against the invasion by Nazi Germany, the Slovak Republic, and the Soviet Union. Shortly afterward, he joined the Polish resistance, co-founding the Secret Polish Army resistance movement. In 1940, Pilecki let himself be captured by the occupying Germans in order to be voluntarily sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp and infiltrate it. 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 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, Pilecki remained loyal to the London-based Polish government-in-exile. He returned to Poland in 1945 to report back on the situation there to the government-in-exile. Before travelling home, and anticipating that he might be killed by Poland's new communist authorities, Pilecki completed the compilation known as Witold's Report which recorded his Auschwitz experiences in detail. Pilecki's fears were well founded: in 1947, he was arrested by the secret police on charges of working for "foreign imperialism" and the following year, after being subjected to torture and a show trial, he was executed in Warsaw aged 47.
Pilecki's 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 allowed for research into his life by Polish historians.
Early life and education
thumb|left|Pilecki (first right) as a scout, [[Oryol, Russia, 1917]]
Witold Pilecki was born on 13 May 1901 in the town of Olonets, Karelia, in the Russian Empire. Witold was one of five children of forest inspector Julian Pilecki and Ludwika Osiecimska.
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 Vilnius. There he attended a gymnasium (secondary school) and founded a local chapter of the ZHP.--> which in 1937 was placed under the Polish 19th Infantry Division. In 1938, Pilecki received the Silver Cross of Merit for his activities. 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. In the spring of 1940, Pilecki saw that Włodarkiewicz's views had become more anti-semitic In August, Włodarkiewicz announced at a TAP meeting that they would, after all, join the mainstream underground with Rowecki – and that it had been proposed that Pilecki should infiltrate the Auschwitz concentration camp. 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. 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.
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 inmates 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. 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. 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.
After the war
thumb|Pilecki, [[Mokotów Prison, Warsaw, 1947]]
thumb|Pilecki in court, 1948
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 Bolesław 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. His case was supervised by Colonel Roman Romkowski. 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 commuted to prison sentences. 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." 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. 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 ' ("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.
In 2014, the Swedish band Sabaton recorded a song about him, "Inmate 4859", on the album Heroes.
A 2015 film, ', 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.