Military Review English Edition November-December 2013 | Page 97

R E V I E W E S S AY
stopped being issued in most cases for registered
Jews . . . . One can establish only around 100,000
cases of registered prisoners dying.” After 1943,
Auschwitz became the largest killing site of Jews.
After his escape, Pilecki was frustrated when
his underground superiors ignored his demands to
invade Auschwitz. As he endured Auschwitz’s evil
and watched as it murdered real heroic men and
women, Pilecki’s sense of justice was offended by
the limitations and reluctance of the Home Army and
Allies. He spoke freely in The Auschwitz Volunteer,
calling out their cowardliness. His outrage did not
consume him; he fought on. During 1944, he continued his resistance work, trying to minimize the
influence of the growing Soviet takeover of Poland.
He participated as an anonymous infantry soldier
during the doomed 1944 Warsaw Uprising, only
revealing his rank when it was necessary. He later
smuggled himself into Italy, joining the Polish II
Corps, commanded by General W?adys?aw Anders.
It was in Italy that he wrote his memoirs—published
now as The Auschwitz Volunteer—about his years
in Auschwitz. He could have stayed in Italy, could
have brought his family, and could have avoided the
Soviets and Polish Communists. Instead, he chose
to return to Soviet-influenced Communist Poland
to engage in spy work.
Pilecki’s cover was blown in July 1946, and he
was ordered to leave Poland. He disobeyed because
he did not want to abandon his family, and he was
unable to find a substitute for his undercover work.
So, he stayed. His life was in serious danger. In
a show trial known as “The Trial of the Sixteen”
(18-21 June 1945), key leaders of the Polish Home
Army were falsely found guilty of collaborating
with Hitler and planning military action against the
Soviets. Moreover, from the late 1940s to 1950s, the
Soviet secret police and Communist Polish security
services killed the remnants of the underground
army, which was anti-communist.
Polish Communists captured Pilecki on 8 May
1947 and placed him in Warsaw’s Mokotów prison
where its interrogators brutally tortured him for
months. Pilecki’s friends from Auschwitz who
survived tried to help him by pleading for help from
a fellow Auschwitz survivor, the prime minister of
Communist Poland, Józef Cyrankiewicz. Cyrankiewicz refused to help; moreover, he wrote a letter
to the judge presiding in the case to throw out any
MILITARY REVIEW

• November-December 2013

record of Pilecki’s time in Auschwitz. A man who
shared in the same indignities as Pilecki sold him
out; as the common expression goes, “with friends
like these who needs enemies.” Pilecki’s torturers
broke him, and he confessed to being an “enemy
of the people.” Pilecki told a family member who
visited him in prison that Auschwitz was a trifle,
child’s play (igraszka) compared to the torture he
received from his Communist persecutors. Pilecki’s
photograph from this time is horrible to look at; he
is almost unrecognizable.
Pilecki’s show trial began on 3 March 1948, and
on 15 March 1948, the court sentenced him to death,
finding him guilty of being a German collaborator,
an anti-communist spy for the West, and numerous other charges. On 25 May 1948, Pilecki was
executed. It is believed he was buried somewhere
in Warsaw’s Pow?zki Cemetery; since 2 ????????????????????????????????????????????????)???????????????????????????????????????)??????????????????????????????????M???????)??????
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