Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 96

Nazi extermination policies toward those groups.
He watched Soviet POWs
build Auschwitz Camp
II-Birkenau, which was to
serve as a 100,000-capacity Soviet POW camp;
however, he witnessed
that same proposed-POW
camp become instead the
gassing facility to murder
Jews upon arrival. Pilecki
saw the victims of inhuman medical experiments
performed on Jews and
others, and saw the camp
destroy the Roma and
Sinti.
Wall display of prisoner identification photos by the SS in Nazi-occupied Poland, 1942,
Pilecki witnessed the
created through force with both an unwilling subject and an unwilling creator, notably
first experiment using
prisoner Wilhelm Brasse of Poland. (Image taken by Skyliber in Auschwitz concentration
camp in 2004)
Zyklon B gas. On 3-5 September 1941, and acting on
his own initiative, Fritzsch
helped his loved ones avoid this fate.
placed about 600 Soviet POWs and 250 sick Poles
This exceptional book’s value is obvious; none- in the basement of the infamous Block 11 in Au stheless, one must consider the facts of to what extent chwitz I-Main Camp, and filled the room with the
the Allies dismissed Pilecki’s various reports on gas; it was successful. After the Nazis refined the
Auschwitz. Throughout his time in the concentra- methods of killing with gas, Zyklon B was used
tion camp, Pilecki smuggled out several intelligence in Auschwitz-Birkenau-Camp II to murder Jews,
reports about the camp by having inmates escaping starting March 1942. Killing Jews with exhaust
Auschwitz to deliver his statements to the Polish fumes from vehicles became the preferred method
Underground, who then forwarded them to the Brit- of murder in the other Nazi death camps (Treblinka,
ish and American governments. In autumn 1943, Sobibór, Che?mno, and Be??ec); Majdanek would
Pilecki submitted “Raport W,” to the Polish exile use both Zyklon B and engine fumes to murder
government in London, which then forwarded it to Jews.
the Allies. Both Raul Hilberg and Norman Davies
In the recently declassified document (2000)
say that once Pilecki’s report was forwarded to the dubbed The Höfle Telegram, British intelligence
Office of Strategic Services (the U.S. intelligence intercepted a coded Nazi cable, which, when
agency) officials questioned its “reliability” and deciphered, revealed that by 31 December 1942,
filed it away.
1,274,166 people had been murdered in Nazi death
Pilecki was in Auschwitz during both the Polish camps: Treblinka-713,555, Majdanek-24,733,
period and Jewish period. His years of confinement Sobibór-101,370, and Be??ec-434,508. For some
distinguish, in my opinion, his eye-witness testi- reason, the statistics of murdered victims from the
mony from other intelligence reports on Auschwitz Che?mno and Auschwitz death camps were not
(for example, the three documents that make up the included. Based upon available sources, Franciszek
so-called Auschwitz Protocols). He was there for Piper estimates that “for the years 1942-43, around
most of the building expansion phases, for most 83,000 death certificates were issued for registered
of the changes in policy toward every individual prisoners [in Auschwitz] . . . . At the end of Februethnic group, and for most of the executions of ary or beginning of March 1943, death certificates
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