On May 25, 1948, the communist authorities in Poland executed the hero of Auschwitz and World War II, Witold Pilecki.
He was registered under number 4859 on September 22, 1940 in Auschwitz. In the concentration camp registers, he was recorded as Tomasz Serafinski.
This is the false name of the Polish soldier Witold Pilecki, born on May 13, 1901. As part of a secret resistance group, he voluntarily surrendered to the German authorities in order to prove the existence of "Auschwitz". From the camp, he sent reports about what was happening inside and the genocide that was being committed. With his help, the Western Allies learned about the atrocities. Pilecki also organized an internal resistance group, with which they managed to organize escapes from "Auschwitz", and also carried out sabotage against German forces.
Polish society learned about Pilecki only in 1990. He was executed by the authorities of the Polish People's Republic on May 25, 1948. He was accused of being an enemy of the people and a traitor. He was buried secretly and his remains have not been found to this day.
Pilecki did indeed manage to build a resistance network in Auschwitz, with whose help medicines and food were illegally imported, and an uprising was also prepared. When in November 1940 he learned that a concentration camp inmate was going to be released, Pilecki sent his first information through him, intended for Warsaw. In March 1941, his report arrived in London - this was the first official document on the situation in Auschwitz that fell into the hands of the anti-Hitler coalition. However, the Allies remained passive, because they assumed that Pilecki's claims were greatly exaggerated.
What Pilecki revealed sounds truly drastic: although the first concentration camp in Auschwitz - the so-called Auschwitz 1, was not the same "death factory" as Auschwitz-Birkenau, located 3 kilometers away, with its notorious gas chambers, many people also died there. They died from beatings by guards, from overwork or from disease. In order to break the morale of the concentration camp inmates, who were mostly Poles, the authorities in the concentration camp organized a mass shooting on every Polish holiday.
The SS Hauptscharführer Gerhard Palich was particularly diligent in his killings. He loved his pistol and had a habit of whistling cheerful melodies while he was looking for his next victim. Sometimes, for "variety", non-concentration camp inmates were brought to him, from whom he could "choose" the next victim, writes Pilecki, who also describes the following scene: "One day he ordered a girl to strip completely naked and run around the fenced yard. He himself stood in the middle and wondered for a long time who to shoot. Then he took aim, shots rang out, and they all fell down. None of us knew whether he would be shot on the spot or left to suffer for hours".
Pilecki's own life was also in danger. Only thanks to the orderlies who were part of his resistance network, he managed to survive after contracting typhus and pneumonia. Sick people like him usually received an injection of poison...
With the help of his network of assistants, Pilecki managed to escape from Auschwitz in 1943. Now free, he wrote his first detailed report on his experiences in the concentration camp. However, the Allies did not particularly believe his claims. And even if they did believe him, they were convinced that any attempt to intervene would end in failure.
Pilecki's further fate was tragic. After 1945, the Nazis were expelled, and Poland was placed entirely under Soviet control. A satellite state of Moscow was created, which acted with brutal methods. Pilecki, who did not want to come to terms with the new master, was detained and tortured. When he was threatened with the arrest of his entire family, he signed a previously prepared confession, which he did not even read. In this way, he de facto signed his own death sentence. He was killed on May 25, 1948, with a shot in the back of the head.
In 1990, shortly after the fall of communism, Pilecki was rehabilitated. In 2000, an extensive edition of his notes from Auschwitz was published. In 2006, he was posthumously awarded Poland's highest decoration - the Order of the "White Eagle".
And today there are still people who justify all this. Not only that, but they make every effort to justify the actions of the authorities.