When Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Witold Pilecki did the only logical thing for a someone as patriotic as him: he signed up to fight.
But after Hitler’s forces quickly overran his nation’s defences, the cavalry officer could have turned to despair.
Instead, he made a choice that few of us can comprehend – he chose to become a prisoner at Auschwitz, to try to substantiate reports of extreme violence being carried out in the camp, which was then a prison for political inmates.
Pilecki was there for three years from September 1940, long enough to see it transform under monstrous commandant Rudolf Hoss into the Nazis’ chief instrument of the Holocaust.
By the time it was liberated 80 years ago today by Russian forces, more than 1.1million Jews – as well as Poles, Romani and Soviet prisoners of war – had been murdered there.
But Pilecki’s smuggled reports about Auschwitz’s horrors fell on deaf ears, and so he escaped in 1943 – only to be imprisoned by Poland’s Communist regime after the war and then executed.
Now, Pilecki’s great-grandson, who admits to a passing resemblance to his hero relative, has spoken of the pride and admiration he has for him.
Speaking in a podcast released to mark the anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, Krzysztof Kosior tells bestselling novelist Charlie Higson: ‘He had to choose between love to his country, to his nation and his family.
When Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Witold Pilecki did the only logical thing for a someone as patriotic as him: he signed up to fight
Pilecki chose to become a prisoner at Auschwitz. He went on to document its transformation into a death camp Above: Pilecki during his time as an inmate at the camp
‘But I am really sure he loved very much his wife and his children. You can see it in their eyes when you talk to them [his grandmother and great-grandmother] about him.
‘They are like yes, he was our hero, from the beginning.’
Pilecki was a member of Poland’s main resistance organisation, the AK.
He became the head of ‘special services’ and was responsible for recruiting agents as well as setting up a network of secret caches of documents and weapons.
It was not until the Gestapo arrested two senior resistance members and sent them to Auschwitz that the rebel forces were alerted to what was happening at the camp.
Pilecki, who was known for his bravery, became the obvious choice to infiltrate Auschwitz and try to organise a mass escape.
In making his terrible choice to enter Auschwitz, Pilecki had to leave behind his wife Maria – Mr Kosior’s great-grandmother – and their two children, Andrzej and Zofia (his grandmother), who were aged just eight and six.
Pilecki took on the name of Tomasz Serafiński, a man who he assumed was dead because he had found his identity documents in a bombed-out building in Warsaw.
Now, Pilecki’s great-grandson, Krzysztof Kosior, who admits to a passing resemblance to his hero relative, has spoken of the pride and admiration he has for him
Pilecki joined the new resistance movement after Poland was overwhelmed by the Nazis
Prisoners of Auschwitz are seen through the camp’s barbed wire fence. More than 1.1million people were murdered at the camp network
Incredibly, Pilecki would later encounter the real Serafiński – a fellow resistance fighter – after escaping from Auschwitz.
Mr Kosior tells the The Spy Who Infiltrated Auschwitz podcast, which was released today: ‘They introduced themselves, the real Thomas Serafinsky gave his hand.
‘And Witold replied, “Thomas Serafiński”, born on that and that day… in that and that city.
‘And he [Serafiński] was like, “that is my info yeah”. And he said, “yes, that is your info, but I have lived with that info quite an interesting three years.’
To get into Auschwitz, Pilecki deliberately walked into a round-up of local men in Warsaw being carried out by members of the Nazi SS.
Pilecki arrived at Auschwitz two days later and was given the prisoner number 4859.
He later wrote: ‘Blinded by the spotlights, shoved, hit, kicked, savaged by dogs, we found ourselves in conditions unlike anything we had ever experienced.
‘The weaker ones were dazed to such an extent that they literally formed a mindless mass.’
Pilecki standing between the two men he escaped from Auschwitz with, Jan Redzej and Edward Ciesielski (right)
Pilecki testifying during his trial after the war. He was found guilty of espionage by his country’s communist rulers after the war
Pilecki had been a cavalry officer in the Polish army before joining the resistance
After describing how SS guards then machine-gunned a group of 11 men to death, Pilecki added: ‘We were approaching a wire fence with a sign above it that read Arbeit macht frei [‘work sets you free’].
‘It was not until later that we learned the meaning of that inscription.’
Pilecki quickly set about organising an underground movement called the Związek Organizacji Wojskowej (ZOW).
Its main purposes were to lift inmates’ spirits by circulating news from the outside; to provide inmates with more food and clothing; to pass on information about conditions to the outside and, as Pilecki wrote, ‘most importantly to prepare the ZOW’s troops to seize control of the camp at an opportune moment, following an airdrop of weapons or troops landing in the area.’
ZOW’s first report was sent in November 1940. Pilecki wrote: ‘Within a few days I felt dizzy, as if thrown on to another planet (…) it gave me the impression that we were locked in a mental institution.
‘[The Germans] by beating [people] on the head, kicking the kidneys and other sensitive places of those already on the ground, jumping on their chests and stomachs with their boots, inflicted death with some incredible enthusiasm.’
He added: ‘We were dying in thousands… tens of thousands… and then hundreds of thousands…’
‘The Kapos had so much work with finishing off over a dozen hundred ‘damned Polish dogs’ that they either forgot about us, or did not want to make the effort of walking up to us through a muddy field.
Pilecki’s report of what he witnessed inside Auschwitz. He told how Jewish prisoners were ‘driven like a herd of animals to slaughter’
Pilecki is seen with his wife and children. He smuggled himself into Auschwitz just months after it had been set up in 1940
‘Each day they were more and more surprised that they [the prisoners] are still alive, walking, when we had been pushed far beyond the threshold of what the strongest human can endure.
‘Some of the bodies, still warm, would swing their heads, smashed open with shovels, to the march of the column.
‘From time to time a Kapo or Krankenmann, the block leader, would smash their clubs on to someone’s head with philosophical detachment, hitting this or that prisoner with such force that they either killed them on the spot or left them unconscious to be flattened by an agricultural roller.
‘Every day a large number of corpses was pulled out by their legs from that little carcass factory to be laid in rows and counted during the roll-call.
‘In the evening Krankenmann, walking about the square with his hands behind his back, would look with a smile of satisfaction at the former prisoners, finally lying in peace.
‘The sight of a man falling, kicking his legs, or moaning enraged Krankemann.
‘Then he jumped on his chest, kicked in the kidneys, in the genitals, finished him off as soon as possible.’
One of the camp’s most vicious killers was Ernst Krankenmann, a convicted murderer who the SS took on to carry out killings inside the camp.
Inmates at Auschwitz are seen after the camp’s liberation by the Russian army in January 1945
Although still officially a prisoner, Krankenmann was given privileges that allowed him to murder other inmates. He was later executed by other inmates.
His report continued: ‘The bestiality of the German torturers manifested in various forms, torturers had fun by smashing testicles – mostly Jews – with a wooden hammer.
‘It was the land of the SS man Gerhard Palitzsch. A handsome man who didn’t beat anyone in the camp because it wasn’t his style – but inside the closed courtyard he was the main instigator of macabre scenes.
‘The inmates stood naked in a row at the “Wailing Wall”, he put a small-caliber carbine under the skull at the back of their heads one by one and ended their lives.
‘Sometimes he used an ordinary cattle bolt for this purpose. The spring-loaded pin cut into the brain, under the skull, and ended life.
‘Sometimes a group of civilians was brought in and given to Palitzsch to play with.
‘Palitzsch told the girls to undress and run around the closed yard. Standing in the middle, he took a long time, then aimed, shot, killed all of them in turn. No one knew who would die next.’
Women prisoners in their bunks at Auschwitz, which stands today as a monument to the horrors of the Holocaust
Pilecki also described horror scenes that charted Auschwitz’s transformation into a death camp.
He wrote: ‘Some of the prisoners were brought to the camp, and they were registered here, given numbers that already reached over 40,000, but the vast majority of transports went straight to Brzezinka, where people without registration were quickly turned into smoke and ashes.
‘On average, about a thousand bodies were burned at that time.’
Brzezinka was the Polish name for the village where Auschwitz II, named Birkenau by the Germans, was set up as the camp’s main extermination centre.
On June 20, 1942, four Poles carrying a report by Pilecki escaped from Auschwitz dressed as SS officers.
The report was forwarded to the Polish government in exile in London and on to the British and the Allies.
Pilecki’s words were the first comprehensive record obtained by the Allies of a Holocaust death camp.
In April 1943, fearing that his resistance movement might be discovered, Pilecki made his escape with two other inmates.
Established in May 1940 when it first took in German ‘career criminals as functionaries’, by the time the war ended Auschwitz (pictured in January 1945) had become the biggest killing machine in history
While working at a large bakery about two kilometres outside the camp, Pilecki and the other two men fled in civilian clothes they had prepared.
Pilecki wrote: ‘I left at night – just as I arrived – so I was in this hell 947 days and as many nights.
‘When I left, I had a few less teeth than when I came, as well as a broken sternum. So I paid very cheaply for such a period of time.’
Once back in Warsaw, Pilecki presented a plan for attacking Auschwitz to the AK, but it was rejected.
He also wrote another report on what he had witnessed, including details about the gas chambers and crematoria.
But the Allies considered his reports ‘exaggerated’.
After the war, Pilecki was targeted by the new Communist regime in Poland. He was captured in 1947 after being accused of spying for the exiled previous government and plotting the assassination of communist officials.
He was tortured and subjected to a show trial, where he was found guilty.
Pilecki’s wife and sister-in-law used to bring him food parcels, until one day in 1948, when they arrived where he was being held and were told ‘he’s not here, he has left’, Mr Kosior says.
He added: ‘He left? What does it mean? He went somewhere? Is he alive? No one knows. This situation went on for many, many years.’
Propaganda reported in newspapers and on the radio branded Pilecki an imperialist spy and his wife found it difficult to get enough work to support her children.
It was not until after the fall of the Communist regime in Poland in 1990 that the family found out Pilecki had been killed in 1948.
His wife had spent decades ‘waiting’ for her husband to return, Mr Kosior says.
Once the terrible truth emerged, his daughter dedicated herself to ‘fighting for his memory’.
Mr Kosior adds: ‘Wherever we come from we can learn from his life, what he did. His legacy, as a general thing, I think it is if you really want something to happen you have to work hard to do it.
‘And in most cases it is possible. The second thing, his legacy would be truthful. It was very important for Witold for the truth to be told.’
The Spy Who Infiltrated Auschwitz is available on Wondery+ and everywhere you get your podcasts from today, with episodes publishing weekly.
