A Resistance Member Volunteered to go to Auschwitz
Witold Pilecki is considered to be one of the greatest heroes of World War II by the Polish people. He was a soldier before the outbreak of World War II fighting in the Polish-Soviet War. Once Poland fell to the Germans he formed the Secret Polish Army in November 1939. By 1940 the group had grown to 8,000 men with 20 machine guns and a few anti-tank rifles. The group merged with the Union for Armed Struggle, which became the AK.
It was in 1940 that Pilecki approached his superiors in the Union for Armed Struggle about a daring plan. He wanted to enter Auschwitz concentration camp and gather intelligence and organize a Resistance movement within the camp. At the time no one knew anything about the camp and thought of it as just a prison or internment camp. No one knew about the atrocities that were already occurring. Pilecki’s plan was approved.
He was given a false identity card with the name Tomasz Serafinski. On September 19, 1940, he went out during a Warsaw street roundup and was caught by the Germans. He was one of 2,000 civilians taken that day. After being held and beaten for two days, he was taken to Auschwitz and given the number 4859. Pilecki quickly got to work forming an underground organization in the camp with the goal of improving prisoner morale, getting food and clothing for the members, and setting up intelligence networks that could get information to the outside.
For years, Pilecki and his group gave information about the horrors of the camp and his reports made it all the way to London. His reports were the main source of intelligence about the camp for the Allies, and Pilecki hoped that there would be a drop off troops or arms to the camp to help them to rise up and escape. In 1943 he decided to break out of Auschwitz in order to convince the Home Army to perform a rescue operation at the camp. He succeeded in escaping, but he could not find enough Allied support to help the AK liberate Auschwitz.