Witold Pilecki, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Witold Pilecki

Polish underground resistance soldier, World War II concentration camp resistance leader

Date of Birth: 13-May-1901

Place of Birth: Olonets, Russia

Date of Death: 25-May-1948

Profession: military officer

Nationality: Poland

Zodiac Sign: Taurus


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About Witold Pilecki

  • Witold Pilecki (13 May 1901 – 25 May 1948; Polish pronunciation: ['vit?lt pi'l?t?sk?i]; codenames Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafinski, Druh, Witold) was a Polish cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader.
  • He served as a rotmistrz (cavalry captain) with the Polish Army in the Polish–Soviet War, in the Second Polish Republic, and in World War II.
  • He was also a co-founder of the Secret Polish Army (Polish: Tajna Armia Polska), a resistance group in German-occupied Poland, and later a member of the underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa).
  • He was the author of Witold's Report, the first comprehensive Allied intelligence report on the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Holocaust.
  • He was a Roman Catholic and was ideologically opposed to Poland's Catholic-nationalist fringe.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 and later escape.
  • While in the camp, he organized a resistance movement and informed the Western Allies of Nazi Germany's Auschwitz atrocities as early as 1941.
  • He escaped from the camp in 1943 after nearly 2½ years of imprisonment.
  • He took part as a combatant in the Warsaw Uprising in August–October 1944.
  • He remained loyal to the London-based Polish government-in-exile after the Communist takeover of Poland, and he was arrested for espionage in 1947 by the Stalinist secret police (Urzad Bezpieczenstwa) on charges of working for "foreign imperialism", a euphemism for British Intelligence.
  • He was executed after a show trial in 1948.
  • Information about his exploits and fate was suppressed by Poland's communist regime until 1989.For his efforts, Pilecki is 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." Polish ambassador to the USA, Ryszard Schnepf described Pilecki as a "diamond among Poland's heroes" and "the highest example of Polish patriotism" at the commemoration event of International Holocaust Remembrance Day held in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on 27 January 2013.

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