Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 90

MR

Review Essay
CAPTAIN WITOLD PILECKI
Daniel Paliwoda, Ph.D.

W
The Auschwitz Volunteer:
Beyond Bravery, Captain
Witold Pilecki, trans. Jarek
Garlinski , Los Angeles,
Calif, Aquila Polonica Publishing.

Daniel Paliwoda, Ph.D., is the author
of Herman Melville and the Theme of
Boredom (2010). In 2006, he won the
New Perspectives on the Holocaust
Summer Seminar Fellowship from the
Graduate Center of the City University
of New York. He has taught numerous
university courses on the Holocaust,
Japanese World War II war crimes,
and Cuban political prisoners. His current book project is a study of Katyn,
a Soviet atrocity of World War II, in
which 25,000 Polish military officers
and leading citizens were murdered.

PHOTO: Witold Pilecki, c. 1930.

88

ITOLD PILECKI JUST about signs his own death warrant by allowing himself to be sent to Auschwitz; for that reason, one realizes immediately that Pilecki was a special man whose moral code is rare.
His underground army superiors did not order him to do so; it was his own
idea. There is a post-modern tendency to sully heroes and their idealism,
but Pilecki is no holy fool. His Catholic faith, spirit of friendly good-fellowship, and patriotism buoy him. What were the sources of these traits
that may help us understand why he volunteered to infiltrate and how he
survived Auschwitz? The most striking characteristic in his upbringing was
his parents’ determination to preserve the family’s Polish identity.
Pilecki was born on 13 May 1901 in Poland (where independence had not
existed for over 100 years). The Third Partition (1795) expunged Poland,
and the Russian Empire absorbed much of it; the Germans and Austro-Hungarians engulfed the remaining territories. Technically, Pilecki was born a
Russian, although Russian authorities tried to suppress the family’s heritage.
Countless major and minor Polish uprisings bloodied the 19th century, and
Pilecki’s ancestors were participants in the January Uprising (1863-1864).
As punishment for their disobedience, the Russians seized much of their
property, forcing them into a life of exile. Pilecki’s father, Julian, a child of
this revolution, eventually graduated from the Petersburg Institute of Forestry
and accepted a forester position in the Russian region of Karelia, northeast of
St. Petersburg, causing him to study in and work with the Russian language.
He married Ludwika Oslecimska, a Polish woman, and together they had
five children; Witold Pilecki was the third child.
November-December 2013

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