Witold Pilecki

His ancestors had been deported to Russia from their home in Lithuania (former Nowogródek Voivodeship region, now in Belarus) for participating in the January 1863–64 Uprising, for which a major part of their estate was confiscated.

Witold was one of five children of forest inspector Julian Pilecki and Ludwika Osiecimska.

Witold Pilecki (13 May 1901 – 25 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 scouting; in the aftermath of World War I, he joined the Polish militia and, later, the Polish Army.

Witold Pilecki was born on 13 May 1901 in the town of Olonets, Karelia, in the Russian Empire.

He was a descendant of a Polish-speaking noble family (szlachta) of the Leliwa coat of arms.

In 1910, Witold moved with his mother and siblings to Vilnius, to attend a Polish school there, while his father remained in Olonets.

In Vilnius, Pilecki attended a local school and joined the underground Polish Scouting and Guiding Association (Związek Harcerstwa Polskiego, ZHP).

Following the outbreak of World War I, in 1916 Pilecki was sent by his mother to a school in the Russian city of Oryol, located safer in the East than Vilnius.

There he attended a gymnasium (secondary school) and founded a local chapter of the ZHP.

In 1918, following the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, Pilecki returned to Vilnius, then outside the control of the Polish government, and joined the ZHP section of the Self-Defence of Lithuania and Belarus, a paramilitary formation under Major General Władysław Wejtko.

The militia disarmed the passing German troops and took up positions to defend the city from a looming attack by the Soviet Red Army.

After Vilnius fell to Bolshevik forces on 5 January 1919, Pilecki and his unit resorted to partisan warfare behind Soviet lines.

He and his comrades then retreated to Białystok, where Pilecki enlisted as a szeregowy (private) in Poland's newly-established Army.

He fought in the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1920, serving under Captain Jerzy Dąbrowski and being involved in the Vilna offensive.

He fought in the Kiev offensive (1920) and as part of a cavalry unit defending the then-Polish city of Grodno.

On 5 August 1920, Pilecki joined the and fought in the crucial Battle of Warsaw and then in the Rūdninkai Forest.

Pilecki later was involved in the Polish–Lithuanian War as a member of the October 1920 Żeligowski's Mutiny where Polish troops occupied Vilnius in a false-flag operation.

He participated in the Polish–Soviet War which ended in 1921.

By the conclusion of Polish-Soviet War in March 1921, Pilecki was promoted to the rank of plutonowy (corporal), becoming a non-commissioned officer.

Shortly afterward, Pilecki was transferred to the army reserves, completing courses required for a non-commissioned officer rank at the Cavalry Reserve Officers' Training School in Grudziądz.

He went on to complete his secondary education (matura) later that same year.

Pilecki would be promoted to podporucznik (second lieutenant, with seniority from 1923) the following year.

He briefly enrolled with the Faculty of Fine Arts at Stefan Batory University but was forced to abandon his studies in 1924 due to both financial issues and the declining health of his father.

In July 1925, Pilecki was assigned to the 26th Lancer Regiment with the rank of Chorąży (ensign).

Also in September 1926, Pilecki became the owner of his family's ancestral estate, Sukurcze, in the Lida District of the Nowogródek Voivodeship.

In 1931, he married Maria Pilecka.

They had two children, born in Vilnius over the next two years: Andrzej and Zofia Optułowicz.

Pilecki actively supported the local farming community.

In 1939, he participated in the unsuccessful defense of Poland against the German invasion and shortly afterward, joined the Polish resistance, co-founding the Secret Polish Army resistance movement.

In 1940, Pilecki volunteered to allow himself to be captured by the occupying Germans in order to infiltrate the Auschwitz concentration camp.

At Auschwitz, he organized a resistance movement that eventually included hundreds of inmates, and he secretly drew up reports detailing German atrocities at the camp, which were smuggled out to Home Army headquarters and shared with the Western Allies.

After eventually escaping from Auschwitz in April 1943, Pilecki fought in the Warsaw Uprising of August–October 1944.

Following its suppression, he was interned in a German prisoner-of-war camp.

After the communist takeover of Poland, he remained loyal to the London-based Polish government-in-exile.

In 1945, he returned to Poland to report to the government-in-exile on the situation in Poland.

Before returning, Pilecki compiled his previous reports into Witold's Report to detail his Auschwitz experiences, anticipating that he might be killed by Poland's new communist authorities.

In 1947, he was arrested by the secret police on charges of working for "foreign imperialism" and, after being subjected to torture and a show trial, was executed in 1948.

His story, inconvenient to the Polish communist authorities, remained mostly unknown for several decades; one of the first accounts of Pilecki's mission to Auschwitz was given by Polish historian Józef Garliński, himself a former Auschwitz inmate who emigrated to Britain after the war, in Fighting Auschwitz: The Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp (1975).

Several monographs appeared in subsequent years, particularly after the fall of communism in Poland facilitated research into his life by Polish historians.