![Witold Pilecki in color](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Witold_Pilecki_in_color.jpg)
Witold's Report, also known as Pilecki's Report, is a report about the
Auschwitz concentration camp written in 1943 by
Witold Pilecki
Witold Pilecki (13 May 190125 May 1948; ; codenames ''Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold'') was a Polish World War II cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader.
As a youth, Pilecki joined Polish underground s ...
, a Polish military officer and member of the
Polish resistance. Pilecki volunteered in 1940 to be imprisoned in
Auschwitz 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 a
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
death camp to be obtained by the
Allies.
The report includes details about the
gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or other animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. Poisonous agents used include hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide.
History
...
s, "''
Selektion
This is a list of words, terms, concepts and slogans of Nazi Germany used in the historiography covering the Nazi regime.
Some words were coined by Adolf Hitler and other Nazi Party members. Other words and concepts were borrowed and appropriated, ...
''", and
sterilization experiments. It states that there were three crematoria in
Auschwitz II
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. I ...
capable of cremating 8,000 people daily.
Pilecki's Report preceded and complemented the ''
Auschwitz Protocols
The ''Auschwitz Protocols'', also known as the ''Auschwitz Reports'', and originally published as ''The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau'', is a collection of three eyewitness accounts from 1943–1944 about the mass murder that was ...
'', compiled from late 1943, which warned about the mass murder and other atrocities taking place at the camp. The ''
Auschwitz Protocols
The ''Auschwitz Protocols'', also known as the ''Auschwitz Reports'', and originally published as ''The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau'', is a collection of three eyewitness accounts from 1943–1944 about the mass murder that was ...
'' comprise the ''
Polish Major's Report'' by
Jerzy Tabeau, who escaped with Roman Cieliczko on 19 November 1943 and compiled a report between December 1943 and January 1944; the
Vrba-Wetzler report; and the Rosin-
Mordowicz report.
Background
On 9 November 1939, after the Polish Army had been defeated in the
invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week aft ...
, Cavalry Captain
Witold Pilecki
Witold Pilecki (13 May 190125 May 1948; ; codenames ''Roman Jezierski, Tomasz Serafiński, Druh, Witold'') was a Polish World War II cavalry officer, intelligence agent, and resistance leader.
As a youth, Pilecki joined Polish underground s ...
, together with his commander, Major
Jan Włodarkiewicz
Lieutenant Colonel Jan Włodarkiewicz (28 May 190019 March 1942; ; noms de guerre ''Damian'', ''Darwicz'' and ''Odważny'') was a Polish soldier, an officer of the Polish Army and a freedom fighter during World War II. He is notable as the first ...
, founded the
Secret Polish Army (''Tajna Armia Polska'', ''TAP''). In 1940 Pilecki presented to his superiors a plan to enter Germany's
Auschwitz concentration camp, gather intelligence on the camp, and organize inmate resistance. 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".
On 19 September 1940 he deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup (''
łapanka
''Łapanka'' () was the Polish name for a World War II practice in German-occupied Poland, whereby the German SS, Wehrmacht and Gestapo rounded up civilians on the streets of Polish cities. The civilians to be arrested were in most cases chosen ...
'') 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.
In Auschwitz
Inside the camp Pilecki organized an underground Military Organization (
Związek Organizacji Wojskowej
Związek Organizacji Wojskowej (, ''Military Organization Union''), abbreviated ZOW, was an underground resistance organization formed by Witold Pilecki at Auschwitz concentration camp in 1940.
Beginning
In 1940, Witold Pilecki, a member of the ...
, ''ZOW''), connected with other smaller underground organizations.
Pilecki planned a general uprising in
Auschwitz and hoped that the Allies would drop arms or troops into the camp (most likely the
Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade
The 1st (Polish) Independent Parachute Brigade was a parachute infantry brigade of the Polish Armed Forces in the West under the command of Major General Stanisław Sosabowski, created in September 1941 during the Second World War and based in ...
, based in Great Britain), and that the
Home Army
The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) est ...
would organize an assault on the camp from outside. In 1943, the
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
redoubled its efforts to ferret out ZOW members, succeeding in killing many of them. Pilecki decided to break out of the camp, hoping to personally convince
Home Army
The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) est ...
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.
The report
ZOW's intelligence network inside the camp started to send regular reports to the Home Army from October 1940. Beginning in November 1940, the first information about
genocide
Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...
occurring in the camp was sent via ZOW to Home Army Headquarters in
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
. From March 1941 onwards Witold Pilecki's messages were forwarded to the
Polish government in exile in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
and, through it, to the British government and other Allied governments. These reports informed the Allies about the unfolding
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
and were the principal source of intelligence on
Auschwitz-Birkenau for the Western Allies.
On June 20, 1942, four Poles, ,
Kazimierz Piechowski
Kazimierz Piechowski (; 3 October 1919 – 15 December 2017) was a Polish engineer, Boy Scout during the Second Polish Republic, and political prisoner of the Nazis held at Auschwitz concentration camp. He was a soldier of the Polish Home Army ...
, and Józef Lempart, made a daring escape from Auschwitz camp.
Dressed as members of the
SS-Totenkopfverbände, fully armed and in an SS staff car, they drove out the main gate in a stolen automobile, a
Steyr 220 belonging to
Rudolf Höss
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes. Höss was the longest-serving comm ...
. 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.
After his own daring escape from Auschwitz on April 27, 1943, Pilecki wrote ''Raport 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 German
prisoner-of-war camp
A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war.
There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. ...
at
Murnau in 1945, Pilecki compiled a version of the report that was over 100 pages long.
The first publication of Witold's Report took place in 2000, 55 years after the war, after it was reconstructed and published by
Adam Cyra
Adam Cyra (born 1949) is a Polish historian. A specialist in World War II history of Central Europe, he graduated from Jagiellonian University. Since 1972 he is a staff member of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim. His doctoral th ...
in his book ''Rotmistrz Pilecki. Ochotnik do Auschwitz''. Additional documents were discovered in 2009.
An English translation was published in 2012 under the title ''
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery''.
See also
*
Raczyński's Note
Raczyński's Note, dated December 10, 1942, and signed by Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Raczyński, was the official diplomatic note from the government of Poland in exile regarding the extermination of the Jews in German-occupied Poland. ...
*
The Polish White Book
''The Polish White Book'' is a semi-official name of a series of comprehensive reports published during World War II by the Ministry of Information of the Polish government-in-exile in London, England, dealing with Polish-German relations before ...
*
The Black Book of Poland
''The Black Book of Poland'' is a 750-page report published in 1942 by the Ministry of Information of the Polish government-in-exile, describing atrocities committed by Germany in occupied Poland in the 22 months between the invasion of Poland in ...
*
Auschwitz Protocols
The ''Auschwitz Protocols'', also known as the ''Auschwitz Reports'', and originally published as ''The Extermination Camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau'', is a collection of three eyewitness accounts from 1943–1944 about the mass murder that was ...
*
The Volunteer (book)
''The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero Who Infiltrated Auschwitz'' (British title; the American edition is titled ''The Volunteer: One Man's Mission to Lead an Underground Army Inside Auschwitz and Stop the Holocaust'') is a 201 ...
*
Vrba–Wetzler report
The Vrba–Wetzler report is one of three documents that comprise what is known as the ''Auschwitz Protocols'', otherwise known as the Auschwitz Report or the Auschwitz notebook. It is a 33-page eye-witness account of the Auschwitz concentratio ...
*
Karski's reports
Karski's reports were a series of reports attributed to Jan Karski, an investigator working for the Polish government-in-exile during World War II, describing the situation in occupied Poland. They were some of the first documents on the Holoca ...
*
Pilecki Institute
The Pilecki Institute ( pl, Instytut Pileckiego) is a Polish government institution in care of preserving the memory, documenting and researching the historical experiences of Polish citizens and increasing awareness regarding totalitarianism in th ...
References
Further reading
# Adam Cyra, ''Ochotnik do Auschwitz. Witold Pilecki 1901–1948'', , Chrześcijańskie Stowarzyszenie Rodzin Oświęcimskich, Oświęcim 2000
# Cyra, Adam ''Spadochroniarz Urban''
aratrooper Urban Oświęcim 2005.
# Cyra, Adam and Wiesław Jan Wysocki, ''Rotmistrz Witold Pilecki'', Oficyna Wydawnicza VOLUMEN, 1997.
# Jacek Pawłowicz, ''Rotmistrz Witold Pilecki 1901–1948'', 2008, .
# Foot, Michael Richard Daniell (2003), Six Faces of Courage. Secret agents against Nazi tyranny. Witold Pilecki, Leo Cooper,
# Lewis, Jon E. (1999), The Mammoth Book of True War Stories, Carroll & Graf Publishers,
# Piekarski, Konstanty R. (1990), Escaping Hell: The Story of a Polish Underground Officer in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Dundurn Press Ltd.,
# Tchorek, Kamil (March 12, 2009), Double life of Witold Pilecki, the Auschwitz volunteer who uncovered Holocaust secrets, London: The Times, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5891132.ece, retrieved March 16, 2009
# 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, ,
#Ciesielski E., ''Wspomnienia Oświęcimskie''
uschwitz Memoirs Kraków, 1968
#
Garlinski, Jozef, ''Fighting Auschwitz: the Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp'', Fawcett, 1975, , reprinted by Time Life Education, 1993.
#Gawron, W. ''Ochotnik do Oświęcimia''
olunteer for Auschwitz Calvarianum, Auschwitz Museum, 1992
#Patricelli, M. "Il volontario"
he Volunteer Laterza 2010, .
#Wysocki, Wiesław Jan. ''
Rotmistrz
__NOTOC__
(German and Scandinavian for "riding master" or "cavalry master") is or was a military rank of a commissioned cavalry officer in the armies of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Scandinavia, and some other countries. A ''Rittmeister'' is typic ...
Pilecki'', Pomost, 1994.
#Kon Piekarski "Escaping Hell: The Story of a Polish Underground Officer in Auschwitz and Buchenwald", Dundurn Press Ltd., 1989, ,
External links
* Staff correspondent (March 5, 1948)
Polish Left-Wing Relations: No Fusion as Yet London: The Times, pp. 3, retrieved March 12, 2009
*
*
Witold Pilecki's report from Auschwitz(rtf)
(HTML)
* Andrzej M. Kobos
Zwoje 5 (9), 1998
Biography of Witold Pilecki on Diapozytyw*Józef Garlinski
2003
Episodes from Auschwitz: Witolds Report.Witold Pilecki's time at Auschwitz and post-War fate presented as a graphic history.
Meet The Man Who Sneaked Into Auschwitz.*{{in lang, en}
Witold’s Report from AuschwitzDownload (PDF) from http://rtmpilecki.eu/raport-3/ , 2018
Government reports
1943 in Poland
Holocaust historical documents
Auschwitz concentration camp
1943 documents