The reports by Cavalry Captain Pilecki were certainly not the only source of information on the crimes committed in KL Auschwitz.
Jack Fairweather recalls that in April 1944, two Jews from Slovakia fled from KL Auschwitz, whose accounts also reached the West. How-ever, no mention is made of their names - Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler - and no mention is made of the fact that, following their accounts, a comprehensive report in Slovak and German was compiled, and secretly submitted to the governments of the Allied countries, the World Jewish Congress, the International Red Cross and even the Vatican.
It also fails to mention that a Pole, Jerzy Tabeau, escaped from the camp in November 1943. The Polish underground sent the report from his stay in the camp to the West. In Switzerland, it ended up in the hands of diplomats and a representative of the World Jewish Congress. The so-called Polish Major’s report also reached the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States. A report drawn up by two other Jews, fugitives Czesław Mordowicz and Arnošt Rosin, was also given to the West in 1944. All the documents were published in whole or in part in the Allied countries and Switzerland. A brochure entitled ‘German Extermination Camps - Auschwitz and Birke-nau’ was published in November 1944 in Washington. The first part contained the text of Vrba and Wetzler, supplemented by a report by Mordowicz and Rosin, while the second part contained a ‘report by a Polish major’, Jerzy Tabeau.
Jack Fairweather claims that Pilecki failed to convince the Western Allies to bomb the railway line, the crematoria and the gas chambers at KL Auschwitz, and this should have been done to save several thousand Jews from death in the gas chambers of the camp. At the same time, reference is made to the statements made by the Allied leaders, who had a negative opinion of the idea.
The British author writes very cautiously about the stay and camp conspiracy activities of Józef Cyrankiewicz, who was never a member of the underground Military Organisation Union
created by Pilecki in KL Auschwitz, and also never met Witold Pilecki personally while in the camp. Cyrankiewicz knew a great deal about his activities in the camp resistance movement, but he remembered him as a prisoner by the name of Tomasz Serafiński, under whose name the Cavalry captain was registered in the camp. All thoughts that Cyrankiewicz is an informer in Auschwitz are rightly repudiated as completely untrue slander.
Fairweather also points out that there are no credible documents that would confirm the exceptionally negative role that Józef Cy-rankiewicz was allegedly supposed to have played during Witold Pilecki’s trial in 1948. Undoubtedly, Cyrankiewicz behaved passively in the situation in question; however, there was little he could do to help because requests for pardon were usually handled personally by
Two photographs: meeting with Jack Fairweather in Auschwitz Memorial.
Photo: Marek Lach