The Heroic Polish Volunteer Who First Exposed Auschwitz

May 6, 2020 by Alex Grobman

The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz by Jack Fairweather, (New York: HarperCollins, 2019), 505 pgs. $39.75.

By Alex Grobman, PhD

Jack Fairweather, a former war reporter for The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph, has written a fascinating account about Witold Pilecki, a 39-year-old gentleman Polish farmer in Eastern Poland who became a national hero. His efforts included alerting the West about Nazi crimes being committed at Auschwitz and attempting to establish an underground army to destroy the camp.

In the summer of 1940, Pilecki, a member of the underground who was also a second lieutenant in the Polish cavalry reserves, arranged to be arrested by the Germans as part of a mass roundup. His intention was to be incarcerated at Auschwitz, whose purpose and activities had, until that point, been shrouded in mystery.

By August of that year, there were more than a thousand people imprisoned in the camp, but the prisoners’ heavily censored correspondence exposed practically nothing. Nevertheless, the number of death notices and the bloodstained personal effects of the deceased prisoners sent to the surviving families had raised serious questions about the level of violence at the camp.

The Polish Underground

The Polish underground realized the Nazis were not simply imprisoning opponents of the Reich. Auschwitz had become the first German camp to target a group of people according to nationality, in this instance, Poles. At this stage, the Germans were making no differentiations by backgrounds among the Poles shipped to Auschwitz. Although the vast majority were Catholics, there were also Jews and ethnic Germans in the initial groups. The goal of the camp was to quash the resistance of men like Pilecki, Polish patriots who were viewed as a threat to the Reich.

As long Auschwitz remained veiled in secrecy, the Polish underground knew the Germans could do as they wished with the inmates. The underground needed someone to infiltrate the camp, acquire information, and, if feasible, organize a resistance unit and initiate a prison break.

Aware that the Germans were singling out educated Poles and those who appeared to be intellectuals, the underground seized the opportunity to send in one of their own, and Pilecki, operating under an assumed name to protect his family, including his two children, was a logical candidate.

Arbeit Macht Frei

Upon passing through the gate of Auschwitz, Pilecki and his fellow Polish prisoners were confronted by kapos waiting with clubs to use against them.

When a kapo asked one of the prisoners for his profession and heard the response—judge—the kapo excitedly struck with his club. Other kapos joined, beating their victim to a bloody pulp.

It made sense to Pilecki that doctors, lawyers, professors, and Jews were being singled out. The Germans, he realized, were truly determined, as they had openly avowed, to relegate the Polish people to “mere chattel.”

Against almost insurmountable odds, Pilecki managed to document the inhuman treatment to which prisoners were subjected, including physical beatings, starvation rations, lice infestations, constant hunger and cold, and wholesale murder. The information was then confirmed and transmitted to the underground by prisoners who had been released from the camp.

The response to these reports, including pleas to the Allies to bomb the camp, makes this book an important addition to our understanding of what transpired at Auschwitz, and the horrendous suffering the Poles endured at the hands of the Germans.

What Made Him Different?

Among the issues Fairweather sets out to explore is an understanding of Pilecki’s personal character that might distinguish him from others. After studying Pilecki’s own writings and gathering information from those who knew him and had fought beside him, Fairweather concludes that Pilecki did not stand out at all. He had no significant record of service. There is no indication that he was pious. 

So, the question remains: Why did this average person decide to risk his life in order to aid people he didn’t know, while so many others chose simply to look away?

Fairweather concludes that Pilecki’s inexplicable behavior illustrates the resolve required to recognize and differentiate “new evils from old, to name injustice, and to implicate ourselves in the plight of others.”

Limits to His Empathy

It is clear that there were limits to Pilecki’s empathy. He never viewed the Holocaust as the central event of World War II or the destruction of six million Jews “as a symbol of humanity.”   

In a report he wrote in 1945, Pilecki openly admitted how difficult it was for him to relate to the murder of the Jews. His primary concern had been the continued survival of Poland, his men, and himself. This devotion to his country provided him with “a sense of service and a moral compass,” enabling him to complete his mission against all obstacles.

Alex Grobman, a Hebrew University-trained historian, is senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society and a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.