Witold's Report, also known asPilecki's Report, is a report about theAuschwitz concentration camp written in 1943 byWitold Pilecki, a Polish military officer and member of thePolish resistance. Pilecki volunteered in 1940 to be imprisoned inAuschwitz to organize a resistance movement and send out information about the camp. He escaped from Auschwitz in April 1943. His was the first comprehensive record of aHolocaust death camp to be obtained by theAllies.
Pilecki's Report preceded and complemented theAuschwitz Protocols, compiled from late 1943, which warned about the mass murder and other atrocities taking place at the camp. TheAuschwitz Protocols comprise thePolish Major's Report byJerzy Tabeau, who escaped with Roman Cieliczko on 19 November 1943 and compiled a report between December 1943 and January 1944; theVrba-Wetzler report; and the Rosin-Mordowicz report.[2]
Background
On 9 November 1939, after the Polish Army had been defeated in theinvasion of Poland, Cavalry CaptainWitold Pilecki, together with his commander, MajorJan Włodarkiewicz, founded theSecret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska,TAP).[3] In 1940 Pilecki presented to his superiors a plan to enter Germany'sAuschwitz concentration camp, gather intelligence on the camp, and organize inmate resistance.[4] At the time, little was known about how the Germans ran the camp, which appeared to operate as an internment, or large prison, camp. Pilecki's superiors approved his plan and provided him with a false identity card in the name of "Tomasz Serafiński".[5] On 19 September 1940 he deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup (łapanka) and was caught by the Germans, along with some 2,000 innocent civilians. After two days' detention in the Light Horse Guards Barracks, where prisoners suffered beatings with rubber batons, Pilecki was sent to Auschwitz and was assigned inmate number 4859.[5][6]
Auschwitz
Inside the camp Pilecki organized an underground military organization (Związek Organizacji Wojskowej,ZOW), connected with other smaller underground organizations.[7][8] Pilecki planned a general uprising inAuschwitz and hoped that the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp (most likely thePolish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, based in Great Britain), and that theHome Army would organize an assault on the camp from outside. In 1943, theGestapo redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, succeeding in killing many of them.[9] Pilecki decided to break out of the camp, hoping to personally convinceHome Army leaders about his idea of the uprising in Auschwitz. On the night of April 26/27, 1943, Pilecki made a daring escape from the camp, but the Home Army did not accept his insurgency plan, as the Allies considered his reports about the Holocaust exaggerated.[citation needed]
Report
ZOW's intelligence network inside the camp started to send regular reports to the Home Army starting in October 1940. Beginning in November 1940, the first information aboutgenocide occurring in the camp was sent via ZOW to the Home Army headquarters inWarsaw.[10] From March 1941 onwards Witold Pilecki's messages were forwarded to thePolish government in exile inLondon and, through it, to the British government and other Allied governments. These reports informed the Allies about the unfoldingHolocaust and were the principal source of intelligence onAuschwitz-Birkenau for the Western Allies.[11]
On June 20, 1942, four Poles,Eugeniusz Bendera [pl],Kazimierz Piechowski,Stanisław Gustaw Jaster and Józef Lempart, made a daring escape from Auschwitz.[12][13][14]Dressed as members of theSS-Totenkopfverbände, fully armed and in an SS staff car, they drove out the main gate in a stolen automobile, aSteyr 220 belonging toRudolf Höss. Jaster, a member of ZOW, carried with him a detailed report about conditions in the camp, written by Pilecki. The Germans never recaptured any of them.[15]
After his own daring escape from Auschwitz on April 27, 1943, Pilecki wroteRaport W. The report was signed by other members of the Polish underground who worked with ZOW: Aleksander Wielopolski, Stefan Bielecki, Antoni Woźniak, Aleksander Paliński, Ferdynand Trojnicki, Eleonora Ostrowska and Stefan Miłkowski, and it included a section called "Teren S" which contained a list of ZOW members. Later, after his release from the Germanprisoner-of-war camp atMurnau in 1945, Pilecki compiled a version of the report that was over 100 pages long.[16]
The first publication of Witold's Report took place in 2000, 55 years after the war, after it was reconstructed and published byAdam Cyra in his bookRotmistrz Pilecki. Ochotnik do Auschwitz.[17][18] Additional documents were discovered in 2009.[19] An English translation was published in 2012 under the titleThe Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery.[20]
^Henryk Świebocki (1997).London has been informed—: reports by Auschwitz escapees. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. p. 94.ISBN83-85047-60-3.The chronological order begins with the 'Polish Major's Report,' Jerzy Tabeau's text from his Polish manuscript, which the ... still in the camp, the memoirs of August Kowalczyk, or the accounts of the late Stanisiaw Chybinski and Witold Pilecki.
^Malinowski, Kazimierz (1986).Tajna Armia Polska. Znak. Konfederacja Zbrojna. Zarys genezy, organizacji i działalności (in Polish). Warszawa.ISBN83-211-0791-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
^Pawłowicz, Jacek (2008).Rotmistrz Witold Pilecki 1901–1948 (in Polish). Instytut Pamięci Narodowej.ISBN978-83-60464-97-7.
^abLewis, Jon E. (1999), The Mammoth Book of True War Stories, Carroll & Graf Publishers,ISBN0-7867-0629-5, p. 390
^Kazimierz Piechowski, Eugenia Bożena Kodecka-Kaczyńska and Michał Ziółkowski. "Byłem Numerem: świadectwa z Auschwitz". Hardcover, Wydawnictwo Sióstr Loretanek,ISBN83-7257-122-8
^Pilecki, Witold (25 May 2008)."Witold's Report".Volunteer for Auschwitz. Translated by Kucharski, Jacek (Full Text Online, Translated from Polish for the "LET'S REMINISCE ABOUT WITOLD PILECKI" ("PRZYPOMNIJMY O ROTMISTRZU") initiative ed.). RetrievedAugust 12, 2015.
Foot, Michael Richard Daniell (2003), Six Faces of Courage. Secret agents against Nazi tyranny. Witold Pilecki, Leo Cooper,ISBN0-413-39430-1
Piekarski, Konstanty R. (1990), Escaping Hell: The Story of a Polish Underground Officer in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Dundurn Press Ltd.,ISBN1-55002-071-4
Wyman, David S.; Garlinski, Jozef (December 1976), "Review: Jozef Garlinski. Fighting Auschwitz: The Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp", American Historical Review (American Historical Association) 81 (5): 1168–1169,doi:10.2307/1853043,ISSN0002-8762
Kon Piekarski "Escaping Hell: The Story of a Polish Underground Officer in Auschwitz and Buchenwald", Dundurn Press Ltd., 1989,ISBN1-55002-071-4,ISBN978-1-55002-071-7
(in English)"Witold Pilecki's full report".at Volunteer for Auschwitz (Online, Translated into English for the Let's Reminisce about Witold Pilecki initiative ed.). May 2008.
