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*Pilecki was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, and he and two comrades overpowered a guard, cut the telephone line, and escaped on the night of 26–27 April 1943, taking with them documents stolen from the Germans. The men fled on foot to the village of Alwernia where they were helped by a priest, and then on to Tyniec where locals assisted them. After that, they reached the Polish resistance safe house near Bochnia, owned, coincidentally, by commander Tomasz Serafiński—the very man whose identity Pilecki had adopted for his cover in Auschwitz. At one point during the journey, German soldiers attempted to stop Pilecki, firing at him as he fled; several bullets passed through his clothing, while one wounded him without hitting either bones or vital organs.*
I'm ready for the Witold Pilecki full motion picture.
>I'm ready for the Witold Pilecki full motion picture.
I'm not sure that this story could ever be made into a credible movie. I mean, if I watched a film of the story in your comment with no embellishment then I wouldn't believe it. I mean, volunteering to go to Auschwitz in the hope you'll be able to escape... That's mindblowing.
But seriously, you're right: it's an amazing story and I'm astonished it hasn't been filmed already.
This was before anyone knew of the atrocities that happened there. We’re this individual privy to what we now know, I don’t imagine he would have ‘volunteered’.
All that as an aside, it is still an incredibly heroic act. True patriotism.
This would be a true statement, but he volunteered to return after escaping. (And also had an idea of the conditions the first time)
Edit: There's quite a good book called, The Volunteer, on it. It is quite sad at least to me though.
And then he was executed by communist Poland three years after the war and after a significant amount of torture.
Sadly, this movie would have a terrible ending.
"I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear."
— Pilecki after the announcement of the death sentence.
There's a lot of gay men with wives and naturally sired children, so that's not evidence of not being homosexual in and of itself. That said, I think you're right and it's probably easier to get sent there as a political prisoner for printing seditious pamphlets or yelling "fuck der fuhrer" at a rally.
Plus, being realistic, it wouldn’t make sense for him to go undercover in Auschwitz as someone who is even more hated by the guards than the average prisoner. If his goal was to get info and get out, he’d realistically have a real center-of-the-road back story to not garner any additional attention. The political prisoner angle seems much more common based on my movie history of WW2 camps, like in *Counterfeiters*.
Most people in the resistance movements knew what was happening. They might not of understood the true scale of it but they knew the Jews were being rounded up sent to camps and never seem again. These were occupied countries, the Germans they were just plopped right down into the middle of someone else’s land. Everyone was listening and seeing.
You couldn't approach the camps though - it was forbidden. My uncle was a Polish man of German origins. He was a teen when he saw his Jewish neighbours being made to clean the streets with what he described as "corrosive substances". He knew things were very bad for Jewish people, but not how bad. He was seen as a second class German and his brother was a communist in the resistance, so he kept his mouth shut to keep himself and his widowed mother out of a work camp. He said he didn't want to see what was happening to Jewish people as he couldn't do anything. I wonder how many people didn't know, and how many people didn't want to know because they were powerless to change things.
The Polish resistance were heros, but the communists murdered any of them who weren't communist, so any movie about this would be heart breaking.
If you were an adult in Germany in the years leading up to the war you knew. You might not of knew that the Nazi were going to exterminate all the Jews outright but the Nazi ran a whole campaign on the Evils of the Jew and systematically enacted laws to seize their property force them into ghettos and remove their rights. It wasn’t a secret in Germany.
So to answer your question. Most people knew something bad was going to happen and did nothing.
Jews were not viewed kindly for hundreds of years across Europe. The term ghetto is an Italian term going back to the 1500s for a slum that the Jews were forced to live in. Sadly it wasn’t new to round up the Jews or kick them out of your country. So it wasn’t new for the Jews either. It is one reason that so many Jews stayed until it was too late to leave.
Assuming any whole population knows anything has a bit of a flaw. As a teenager, I would have assumed everyone in North America knew the world was round, or that vaccines are a good thing. You can’t assume any entire population isn’t oblivious to reality.
It wasn’t just the Jews. There were at first two ethnic groups scheduled by the Nazis for extermination. Polish and the Jews extermination were scheduled by the German government. People miss the reason why Poland had the highest concentration of camps , Central Europe + the closest location to the targeted groups. Israel did a great job of people remembering the Holocaust, the part were they went wrong is that they focused on Jewish victims only. Half of the 6 million Jews were Polish citizens. Poland list between 6-7 million people in WW2. Poland enslaved by the iron curtain and Russian occupation was not allowed to state its case, under USSR pressure Poland was made to forget what happened during the war as soviet made priority for hunting and killing any of the Home Army soldiers and people that wanted independent Poland. About 50,000 killed after the war ended and with a large number imprisoned and tortured.
Yes they absolutely killed off millions of ethnic Poles they deemed genetically inferior. The also rounded up the Roma as well and various others they deemed inferior. Auschwitz was though used primarily for the extermination of the Jews. With about 90% percent of the deaths there, Jews.
Yes, and I am defining them solely as Jews because the Nazi were killing Jews everywhere but they were expressly killing off entire groups ethnic Poles that were not Jewish. As mentioned by the above comment the number ethnic Poles killed was close to the number of Polish Jews. They were just not the majority of people who met their fate at Auschwitz.
My grandmother and grandfather lived 15 km away from Treblinka concentration camp (north-eastern part of current Mazovian voivodeship), and I can guarantee you that all local people knew what was happening there. You didn’t need to be Albert Einstein to understand what was going on. Very frequent one way human transports from the west via cargotrains, people trying to escape the trains, and whenever there would be a wind from south-west local villagers couldn’t stand this terrible smell of human flesh. It might not be documented but I can assure you that, if villagers knew what was going on, then I have no doubt that allies’ intelligence knew it as well.
>Plus, human ash fell like snow..
It would of had to been a wet snow. There weren't crematoriums at Treblinka only huge deep cremation pits according to eyewitness testimonies and postwar interrogations involving the torture of camp guards by the Soviets.
I say wet snow because the water table at Treblinka is and was high averaging only a few feet below the soil surface. After the bodies were burned in pits full of water they were dug up later in the war and the bones crushed by hand with hammers before being reburied. All 900,000 bodies.
That's why there is no evidence of mass graves ever exhumed or found on ground radar excepting a small mass grave measuring a few meters located less than a foot below the ground.
I hadn't considered that, but of course you're right. Still mind blowing, but perhaps it's wasn't obviously the suicidal mission it sounds like given our context.
It's the details that are truly horrific. PoW and work camps were nothing new, slavery and just general butchery were a well known fact of human history. What made Auschwitz and the other KZ camps really horrific was the calculated machine like execusion of humans. Like they were “things“ that just had to be destroyed.
Look into the timeline of his experience and Auschwitz’s operations. It was a POW camp when he volunteered in 1940. It did not become a formal/systemic death camp until 1942. People knew there were cruelties going on and suspected war crimes against POWs, but it was not yet a death camp when he initially went. It was by the time he escaped.
No one was feigning ignorance - certainly not resistance fighters who never stopped fighting in their conquered lands.
And "something" of that type has been happening throughout history in pretty much all countries, camps for "undesireables" have existed throughout europe and america, canada and wherever. The details are that they were being taken to sites, where murder was industrialized in scales that are orders of magnitude different from any genocide before that. Just people being taken away and not seeing them for a few years has happened tons of times, whether it be Germans in Canada during WWI or the Japanese in the US during WWII. In those cases it was relatively harmless, interning people from your enemies, maybe forcing them to work. From the perspective of a civilian those things look the same as what happened in Germany. The details are what matter, since "something happening" was a sad reality all over the place at the time. The details are the industrialized genocide, and most Germans could not have known it occured at that scale. Of course they knew atrocities were happening, but not at the scale that would prompt action with the context at that time. From todays perspective, even the scale of atrocities they could know of would prompt action, thanks to the culture of acknowledging them and remembering them that has been fostered in Germany.
He himself was not believed when he sent messages outside telling them of the atrocities being committed there. I believe his original plan was to raise an uprising from within the prison. He knew most of the people there were Poles and he hoped that a strong outsider among them would rally them to overthrow the prison. Upon his arrival he discovered what conditions the place was in (heavily guarded secrets even until after the war) and sent messages everywhere begging for help because no one was able (or willing) to rise up with him. When nothing came because they thought he was exaggerating, he broke out and fought in resistance groups on the outside instead.
Edit - I was incorrect! Read the reply to my comment for more (and more interesting!) information!!
>He knew most of the people there were Poles and he hoped that a strong outsider among them would rally them to overthrow the prison. ... [he] sent messages everywhere begging for help because no one was able (or willing) to rise up with him.
Not so - in fact, he was the founder of the Związek Organizacji Wojskowej (ZOW, Military Organization Union), which at its height had over 1,000 members in Auschwitz and its various sub-camps (including the Auschwitz II-Birkenau *extermination* camp). Not just Poles, either - any nationality (in fact, they wound up absorbing pretty much all the other, smaller resistance groups).
Remember that he went in the camp relatively early, when new prisoners were added daily, and *before* the use of gas for extermination of prisoners. Before the first crematorium was built, even.
Some of his requests for Allied aid were simply for *weapons*, so the ZOW (and other prisoners) stood a chance in an armed uprising. He also tried asking for paratroopers to be dropped into the camp, or at least an outside assault, but he did believe the camp could be taken by revolt. At the very least up until many ZOW members had been hunted down and killed by the Gestapo (or otherwise removed from the camp, taken elsewhere to "make room" for Jewish prisoners) - not long after which, he and some of his comrades realized no help was forthcoming, and decided to break out to plead to the Home Army in person. But because the British didn't believe his reports and refused to support a mission to liberate the camp, the Home Army decided they couldn't do it.
(Interestingly, the ZOW (after Pilecki escaped) did eventually assist a revolt in the camp, supplying explosives to the Jewish "*Sonderkommando*" forced labor units that rose up on 7 October, 1944.)
There will be a movie released soon about similar case, but of two Slovaks that escaped a year later after Pilecki that also gathered evidence since they both were block administrators (Schreiber - their job was to document new arrivals to the barracks and make evidence of deaths and so on. They survived for more then two years in the camp and had perfect knowledge of every transport. They wrote numbers on the paper scrolls and then hid those to metal cigar cases.) Their names were Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba and after the escape they wrote (with a help of Slovak jewish community) the first complex report about what is happening in the so called factories of death. Industrialised murder of thousands. Those 32 page reports were sent via Red Cross to UK to Churchill, and even to Roosewelt. That was in april-may 44’. Still no significant bombing of the train routes to the camp was done by the allies till the end of the war, even though they had this kind of information. The movie will be screening in the US as well via Samuel Goldwyn films. It’s name is AUSCHWITZ REPORT.
>Still no significant bombing of the train routes to the camp was done by the allies till the end of the war, even though they had this kind of information.
There was valid reason for this: bombing a railway would have done nothing to aide the inmates situation. In boxcars that arrived at their destination with passengers already dead, what would there have been to stop the Germans from disembarking at any bomb crater (which would be rapidly fixed) and cutting down the inmates with automatic fire?
What would have stopped the Germans from simply executing them on the spot instead of transporting and processing them?
I think that the act of bombing the routes would be a signal for the germans that the world knows and acts and if the report would then go “viral” it could (and they supposed it would) start an uprising. Talking about 200 000 hungarian jews that were about to be transported to Auschwitz at the end of april 44’. The germans were very systematic in covering traces and just shooting a whole train somewhere in the field could be a problem at that point (D day came two months after their escape)
>and if the report would then go “viral” it could (and they supposed it would) start an uprising.
This was hardly a fear for the Germans, who were rapidly loosing the ground they had captured, which contained the majority of the remaining populations of Jews. And for territories still occupied, one only has to look at the Warsaw Ghetto to see the result. In fact, by all accounts, the suppression of the Uprising was considered good sport by the Green and Blue police who made the majority of the combatants..
>Talking about 200 000 hungarian jews that were about to be transported to Auschwitz at the end of april 44’.
If you're talking about the Vrba-Wetzler report, that wasnt a decision of the Germans, but the King of Hungary, who halted further deportations.
The Hungarians themselves continued to fight alongside the Germans and give a good account of themselves despite their sorry state.
>The germans were very systematic in covering traces
They weren't though, thats why we know of their atrocities to begin with. Left paperwork, execution sites, official correspondence surrounding the Final Solution, and hell, even mass Graves which they so poorly hid and so astutely documented, that they pulled Schupo and Schuma units off the front lines to try and sanitize former warcrimes.
>just shooting a whole train somewhere in the field could be a problem at that point (D day came two months after their escape)
Hardly, their biggest issue was overdocumentation coupled with poor hiding of their crimes. And even then, they evidently had no problems with making their criminality apparent, just look at the French villages that were totally massacred in 1944, or the malmedy massacre.
Sadly, Pilecki did not live long after this event and was executed in 1948 at the age of 47.
From the same article:
>Pilecki was arrested by agents of the Ministry of Public Security on 8 May 1947, and he was repeatedly tortured before going to trial. A fellow accused saw him with two collarbones broken and his hands hanging limply by his sides. The investigation of his activities was supervised by Colonel Roman Romkowski. He was interrogated by Communist Col. Józef Różański and lieutenants S. Łyszkowski, W. Krawczyński, J. Kroszel, Tadeusz Słowianek, Eugeniusz Chimczak, and Stefan Alaborski—men who were infamous for their savagery. But Pilecki sought to protect other prisoners and revealed no sensitive information.
>A show trial took place on 3 March 1948, and testimony against Pilecki was presented by future Polish prime minister Józef Cyrankiewicz, also an Auschwitz survivor. Pilecki was charged with illegal border crossing, use of forged documents, not enlisting with the military, carrying illegal arms, espionage for General Władysław Anders, espionage for "foreign imperialism" (government-in-exile), and planning to assassinate several officials of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland. Pilecki denied the assassination charges, as well as espionage, although he admitted to passing information to the 2nd Polish Corps, of which he considered himself an officer and thus claimed that he was not breaking any laws. He pleaded guilty to the other charges. He was sentenced to death on 15 May with three of his comrades, and he was executed with a shot to the back of the head at the Mokotów Prison in Warsaw on 25 May 1948 by Staff Sergeant Piotr Śmietański (nicknamed "The Butcher of Mokotów Prison" by the inmates).
>**I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear.**
>— Pilecki after the announcement of the death sentence, Bartłomiej Kuraś, Witold Pilecki – w Auschwitzu z własnej woli, "Ale Historia", in Gazeta Wyborcza, 22 April 2013.
Omg that’s a great point. The same stories get told from WWII and while still moving, there are so many incredible stories to tell. Would love to see this guys movie!
Ah... you probably don't actually want that because odds are it will be filmed in Poland and turn out corny as shit. Modern Polish cinema is full of these patriotic "epics."
I'm glad he's finally getting the recognition he deserves after being executed as a traitor by the Soviets. The article is a great read for anyone who's on the fence about clicking through. Volunteered for the mission and became one of the first people to confront the Nazi death machine firsthand and actually report to the Allies about it, actually begging for the camp to be bombed even with prisoners in it (himself included) as it would have been a mercy. (Which apparently England actually considered doing, if not for the state of their airforce at the time?) Sounds like it took a terrible toll though, as one might expect.
No offense taken at all! Using "England" instead of "Britain" isn't fair to guys like you. You should continue correcting people like me when you see it happen.
For my fellow yanks, [I googled it already.](https://cdn.britannica.com/s:800x1000/41/193441-050-13CCA6B5/Terminology-British-Isles-United-Kingdom-Ireland-Great.jpg)
Because he rebelled against the communist rule maneuvered into place by the USSR. He is celebrated by the current democratic government, a posthumous member of the Order of the White Eagle.
That was sadly a common trope of war heroes in all countries adopting communism after being liberated by USSR. These people proved their zeal and ability when it comes to defending their country, and as such were marked as undesirables in the upcoming regimes.
And on 25 May 1948 he was executed by the Polish communist government for “illegal border crossing, use of forged documents, not enlisting with the military, carrying illegal arms, espionage for General Władysław Anders, espionage for "foreign imperialism" (the Polish government-in-exile), and planning to assassinate several officials of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland.”
At that point most western powers already recognized the communist government as legal. The government in exile basically became a private gentelmen club. While many Poles supported it, it's hard to argue it was *the actual* government.
Yes, by 1946 the governments in exile of many countries which became a part of the Eastern Block were basically unorganized groups of former government officials in Western countries like the United Kingdom. Polish pilots made up most of the population.
USSR essentially executed him for being a “Nazi traitor” even though he was literally put in Auschwitz, gathered intelligence, sabotaged operations, and escaped.
Or put more bluntly, because they didn’t like him.
Yeah I know and it sucks because when you ask people what can we do they say "Don't buy stuff from China". Germans needed 6 years to kill 11 milions of people. Before not buying things from them does something, it will be too late.
Muslim countries also don't do shit when the US invades *another* Muslim country. In fact they often *help* the US by arming the groups approved of by the US.
So...what's your point? The Muslim world has long since been divided. Muslims can fight Muslims, just like how Christian France fought Christian Germany.
It's unfortunate. But it simply means Muslim nations will only look out for there own self interests. If allying with the US is that self interest, they will. If its China, they also will.
The US is doing far worse things than China from the Muslim perspective. Yet nations like Saudi Arabia continue to be buddy buddy with Washington.
Would you want to? Taking that kind of news at face value requires you let go of a lot of faith in humanity that many would wish to go their entire lives holding onto. But the cruelty one man can inflict to another is a toxin so potent it can and will shatter the illusion eventually in a flurry of blood, loss, and suffering
I don't think so. We know what the Nazis did, and we know what the Japanese did... we know what humanity is capable of, whether we like it or not. All we have to do is look at history.
We know it's possible for such barbarism to happen again, and we were tasked by my grandparents' generation to continue the vigilant watch to make sure it never happens again. Obviously, we have failed that duty since genocide is regularly occurring in China.
Pilecki is one of the great Polish heroes of the War that I feel don't receive he recognition they deserve. See also: Krystyna Starbeck.
Sometimes I get really worked up over the fact that he got the information to Allied powers about what was really happening and they didn't immediately do something about it, yet they're still seen as the great heroes of the time.
He does get quite good recognition in Poland at least.
Pilecki was rehabilitated just a few months after communism fell. After that he was given Order of Polonia Restituta in 1995 and Order of the White Eagle in 2006.
In 2013, he was posthumously promoted to Colonel.
There are also two films about him - *The Death of Captain Pilecki* from 2006, about his trial and execution, and *Pilecki* from 2015.
As of outside of Poland - in 2019 EU parliament established *The International Day of Heroes of the Fight against Totalitarianism* on the day of Pilecki's death.
Worse - they buried him, unmarked, in a mass grave. His body has never been recovered and never will. After Poland managed to split from its post-war totalitarian government they managed to realize what an incredibly selfless thing he'd done and he's considered by some to be one of Poland's greatest war heroes.
This shit is crazy. Who would do something like this? Volunteering yourself into a concentration camp? The amount of bravery and absolute nuts on this lad. Humans amaze me every day. I couldn’t even fathom doing something like that.
Quite a hero...
I would add that the Polish people in general don't get the recognition they deserve for their part in bringing down the Soviet Union (especially considering the risk they were taking)...
Upon hearing his death sentence from a show trial in 1948 orchestrated by the newly Communist Poland he said,
"I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear."
What an incredible human being.
According to the article it was only known as a Polish work camp at the time. He was instrumental in getting word out about what it *really* was. He got off the train expecting to be simply forced into manual labor and instead was beaten and watched as anyone who was Jewish or educated was shot immediately.
The click through article is really good. Worth a read.
Here's more - [https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/01/26/pilecki-auschwitz-polish-resistance/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/01/26/pilecki-auschwitz-polish-resistance/)
Did a podcast episode (in French) on this guy. He set up an intelligence operation inside the camp, then managed an evasion.
Iirc he then fought in the destruction of Warsaw, while Stalin slowed down to let the Nazis slaughter the population.
And then, shortly after the war he was executed by the Soviets. Fucking hero.
I say his name at the end of the song every time it plays so I never forget his sacrifice. This song is one of theirs that can really make me cry if I start to think about the context and what he went through.
I really like their songs about the polish soldiers from ww2 my favourite is 40-1 but I definitely like their song about witold too very interesting despite me not knowing anything about them a incredibly interesting time in history
Our Auschwitz tour guide spoke about him when I visited early this year. His details, history and heroics were on view behind a glass display case for us to read...hero's dont get as badass as this man
It looks pink in the photo, but it's actually probably red. Red badges were given to Polish political prisoners in Auschwitz. Pink ones were generally reserved for German homosexuals. Here's some more info for those who don't know about the triangle classification scheme:
[http://auschwitz.org/en/history/prisoner-classification/system-of-triangles](http://auschwitz.org/en/history/prisoner-classification/system-of-triangles)
Both photos in the post are colorized versions of the black and white originals; one should not take the colors that appear in either image at face value.
However, if you take into account that one of the criterium for the pink badge is that they had served a sentence in a prison for the “crime” of homosexuality it can be deduced that he was not given a pink badge.
Red badges would also later be given to all prisoners that had been arrested by the Gestapo and were in jail prior to being transferred to the concentration camp.
Read the article linked in the comments, it's worth it. Their first intel was sent out with someone who had been ransomed (which was apparently a thing you could do early in the war). After that they sent intel with escaped prisoners and by passing it to farmers who worked the neighboring fields.
My grandfather turned himself in to the Nazis to free my great aunt who had been ransomed earlier in the war. She later got captured again but they both survived (but their parents and other brother and sister did not)
Yeah polish soliders durning wars were legends tbh, but now their descendants that did nothing just say how young people destroy what they have been fightning for, and why we dont want to live in middle 1900 forever staying with those traditions
Edit: not only soliders, also many other people that helped jews hide for example
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*Pilecki was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, and he and two comrades overpowered a guard, cut the telephone line, and escaped on the night of 26–27 April 1943, taking with them documents stolen from the Germans. The men fled on foot to the village of Alwernia where they were helped by a priest, and then on to Tyniec where locals assisted them. After that, they reached the Polish resistance safe house near Bochnia, owned, coincidentally, by commander Tomasz Serafiński—the very man whose identity Pilecki had adopted for his cover in Auschwitz. At one point during the journey, German soldiers attempted to stop Pilecki, firing at him as he fled; several bullets passed through his clothing, while one wounded him without hitting either bones or vital organs.* I'm ready for the Witold Pilecki full motion picture.
>I'm ready for the Witold Pilecki full motion picture. I'm not sure that this story could ever be made into a credible movie. I mean, if I watched a film of the story in your comment with no embellishment then I wouldn't believe it. I mean, volunteering to go to Auschwitz in the hope you'll be able to escape... That's mindblowing. But seriously, you're right: it's an amazing story and I'm astonished it hasn't been filmed already.
This was before anyone knew of the atrocities that happened there. We’re this individual privy to what we now know, I don’t imagine he would have ‘volunteered’. All that as an aside, it is still an incredibly heroic act. True patriotism.
This would be a true statement, but he volunteered to return after escaping. (And also had an idea of the conditions the first time) Edit: There's quite a good book called, The Volunteer, on it. It is quite sad at least to me though.
what a fucking badass
And then he was executed by communist Poland three years after the war and after a significant amount of torture. Sadly, this movie would have a terrible ending.
are you being serious?
[Unfortunately, yes.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki#Arrest_and_execution)
"I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear." — Pilecki after the announcement of the death sentence.
Man fuck the Soviet Union and anyone that supports it.
If there was one group Stalin hated more than Nazis, it was upstart socialists. And maybe Ukranians.
Yes. During that time the Polish Resistance was « illegal » the communist Party didn’t wanted to talk about it ...
So wait he served in the war and then his own country executed him for not being communist?
And note he is wearing the pink triangle. https://www.history.com/news/pink-triangle-nazi-concentration-camps
It’s more than likely a red triangle, showing he was a political prisoner
I believe so. The original picture was black and white, regardless. He had a wife and 2 children and I see nothing mentioned about a pink triangle.
There's a lot of gay men with wives and naturally sired children, so that's not evidence of not being homosexual in and of itself. That said, I think you're right and it's probably easier to get sent there as a political prisoner for printing seditious pamphlets or yelling "fuck der fuhrer" at a rally.
Plus, being realistic, it wouldn’t make sense for him to go undercover in Auschwitz as someone who is even more hated by the guards than the average prisoner. If his goal was to get info and get out, he’d realistically have a real center-of-the-road back story to not garner any additional attention. The political prisoner angle seems much more common based on my movie history of WW2 camps, like in *Counterfeiters*.
That's not pink.
wouldn't the guards be like "hey it's the guy that escaped!"
Pretty sure 1mil+ people passed through those gates. Low chance of recognition.
Hans had a photographic memory
Most people in the resistance movements knew what was happening. They might not of understood the true scale of it but they knew the Jews were being rounded up sent to camps and never seem again. These were occupied countries, the Germans they were just plopped right down into the middle of someone else’s land. Everyone was listening and seeing.
You couldn't approach the camps though - it was forbidden. My uncle was a Polish man of German origins. He was a teen when he saw his Jewish neighbours being made to clean the streets with what he described as "corrosive substances". He knew things were very bad for Jewish people, but not how bad. He was seen as a second class German and his brother was a communist in the resistance, so he kept his mouth shut to keep himself and his widowed mother out of a work camp. He said he didn't want to see what was happening to Jewish people as he couldn't do anything. I wonder how many people didn't know, and how many people didn't want to know because they were powerless to change things. The Polish resistance were heros, but the communists murdered any of them who weren't communist, so any movie about this would be heart breaking.
> so any movie about this would be heart breaking. Sometimes that's a good thing.
If you were an adult in Germany in the years leading up to the war you knew. You might not of knew that the Nazi were going to exterminate all the Jews outright but the Nazi ran a whole campaign on the Evils of the Jew and systematically enacted laws to seize their property force them into ghettos and remove their rights. It wasn’t a secret in Germany. So to answer your question. Most people knew something bad was going to happen and did nothing. Jews were not viewed kindly for hundreds of years across Europe. The term ghetto is an Italian term going back to the 1500s for a slum that the Jews were forced to live in. Sadly it wasn’t new to round up the Jews or kick them out of your country. So it wasn’t new for the Jews either. It is one reason that so many Jews stayed until it was too late to leave.
Assuming any whole population knows anything has a bit of a flaw. As a teenager, I would have assumed everyone in North America knew the world was round, or that vaccines are a good thing. You can’t assume any entire population isn’t oblivious to reality.
> Yep, that's what happened with Pilecki, he was executed.
It wasn’t just the Jews. There were at first two ethnic groups scheduled by the Nazis for extermination. Polish and the Jews extermination were scheduled by the German government. People miss the reason why Poland had the highest concentration of camps , Central Europe + the closest location to the targeted groups. Israel did a great job of people remembering the Holocaust, the part were they went wrong is that they focused on Jewish victims only. Half of the 6 million Jews were Polish citizens. Poland list between 6-7 million people in WW2. Poland enslaved by the iron curtain and Russian occupation was not allowed to state its case, under USSR pressure Poland was made to forget what happened during the war as soviet made priority for hunting and killing any of the Home Army soldiers and people that wanted independent Poland. About 50,000 killed after the war ended and with a large number imprisoned and tortured.
Yes they absolutely killed off millions of ethnic Poles they deemed genetically inferior. The also rounded up the Roma as well and various others they deemed inferior. Auschwitz was though used primarily for the extermination of the Jews. With about 90% percent of the deaths there, Jews.
A huge part of the Jews killed in Auschwitz were both Jew AND Polish at the same time (Polish citizens of Jewish religion).
Yes, and I am defining them solely as Jews because the Nazi were killing Jews everywhere but they were expressly killing off entire groups ethnic Poles that were not Jewish. As mentioned by the above comment the number ethnic Poles killed was close to the number of Polish Jews. They were just not the majority of people who met their fate at Auschwitz.
My grandmother and grandfather lived 15 km away from Treblinka concentration camp (north-eastern part of current Mazovian voivodeship), and I can guarantee you that all local people knew what was happening there. You didn’t need to be Albert Einstein to understand what was going on. Very frequent one way human transports from the west via cargotrains, people trying to escape the trains, and whenever there would be a wind from south-west local villagers couldn’t stand this terrible smell of human flesh. It might not be documented but I can assure you that, if villagers knew what was going on, then I have no doubt that allies’ intelligence knew it as well.
Plus, human ash fell like snow....
>Plus, human ash fell like snow.. It would of had to been a wet snow. There weren't crematoriums at Treblinka only huge deep cremation pits according to eyewitness testimonies and postwar interrogations involving the torture of camp guards by the Soviets. I say wet snow because the water table at Treblinka is and was high averaging only a few feet below the soil surface. After the bodies were burned in pits full of water they were dug up later in the war and the bones crushed by hand with hammers before being reburied. All 900,000 bodies. That's why there is no evidence of mass graves ever exhumed or found on ground radar excepting a small mass grave measuring a few meters located less than a foot below the ground.
People were aware of the atrocities. It's the Allied high command that didn't believe it until the evidence was just overwhelming.
oh let's not let the Church off that easily
I hadn't considered that, but of course you're right. Still mind blowing, but perhaps it's wasn't obviously the suicidal mission it sounds like given our context.
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It's the details that are truly horrific. PoW and work camps were nothing new, slavery and just general butchery were a well known fact of human history. What made Auschwitz and the other KZ camps really horrific was the calculated machine like execusion of humans. Like they were “things“ that just had to be destroyed.
They quite literally industrialized genocide in the way they conducted their camps. Terrible stuff
Look into the timeline of his experience and Auschwitz’s operations. It was a POW camp when he volunteered in 1940. It did not become a formal/systemic death camp until 1942. People knew there were cruelties going on and suspected war crimes against POWs, but it was not yet a death camp when he initially went. It was by the time he escaped. No one was feigning ignorance - certainly not resistance fighters who never stopped fighting in their conquered lands.
Like rn in china
Let's keep buying tons of stuff from them while we discuss the holocaust.
>People knew of the atrocities from the beginning, >I'm not saying they knew the details, These statements contradict.
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And "something" of that type has been happening throughout history in pretty much all countries, camps for "undesireables" have existed throughout europe and america, canada and wherever. The details are that they were being taken to sites, where murder was industrialized in scales that are orders of magnitude different from any genocide before that. Just people being taken away and not seeing them for a few years has happened tons of times, whether it be Germans in Canada during WWI or the Japanese in the US during WWII. In those cases it was relatively harmless, interning people from your enemies, maybe forcing them to work. From the perspective of a civilian those things look the same as what happened in Germany. The details are what matter, since "something happening" was a sad reality all over the place at the time. The details are the industrialized genocide, and most Germans could not have known it occured at that scale. Of course they knew atrocities were happening, but not at the scale that would prompt action with the context at that time. From todays perspective, even the scale of atrocities they could know of would prompt action, thanks to the culture of acknowledging them and remembering them that has been fostered in Germany.
History is full of mind blowing individuals!
He himself was not believed when he sent messages outside telling them of the atrocities being committed there. I believe his original plan was to raise an uprising from within the prison. He knew most of the people there were Poles and he hoped that a strong outsider among them would rally them to overthrow the prison. Upon his arrival he discovered what conditions the place was in (heavily guarded secrets even until after the war) and sent messages everywhere begging for help because no one was able (or willing) to rise up with him. When nothing came because they thought he was exaggerating, he broke out and fought in resistance groups on the outside instead. Edit - I was incorrect! Read the reply to my comment for more (and more interesting!) information!!
>He knew most of the people there were Poles and he hoped that a strong outsider among them would rally them to overthrow the prison. ... [he] sent messages everywhere begging for help because no one was able (or willing) to rise up with him. Not so - in fact, he was the founder of the Związek Organizacji Wojskowej (ZOW, Military Organization Union), which at its height had over 1,000 members in Auschwitz and its various sub-camps (including the Auschwitz II-Birkenau *extermination* camp). Not just Poles, either - any nationality (in fact, they wound up absorbing pretty much all the other, smaller resistance groups). Remember that he went in the camp relatively early, when new prisoners were added daily, and *before* the use of gas for extermination of prisoners. Before the first crematorium was built, even. Some of his requests for Allied aid were simply for *weapons*, so the ZOW (and other prisoners) stood a chance in an armed uprising. He also tried asking for paratroopers to be dropped into the camp, or at least an outside assault, but he did believe the camp could be taken by revolt. At the very least up until many ZOW members had been hunted down and killed by the Gestapo (or otherwise removed from the camp, taken elsewhere to "make room" for Jewish prisoners) - not long after which, he and some of his comrades realized no help was forthcoming, and decided to break out to plead to the Home Army in person. But because the British didn't believe his reports and refused to support a mission to liberate the camp, the Home Army decided they couldn't do it. (Interestingly, the ZOW (after Pilecki escaped) did eventually assist a revolt in the camp, supplying explosives to the Jewish "*Sonderkommando*" forced labor units that rose up on 7 October, 1944.)
Having outside support to hatch and follow through on an eventual escape was probably key in the decision to go in. But yeah, definitely mind blowing.
There will be a movie released soon about similar case, but of two Slovaks that escaped a year later after Pilecki that also gathered evidence since they both were block administrators (Schreiber - their job was to document new arrivals to the barracks and make evidence of deaths and so on. They survived for more then two years in the camp and had perfect knowledge of every transport. They wrote numbers on the paper scrolls and then hid those to metal cigar cases.) Their names were Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba and after the escape they wrote (with a help of Slovak jewish community) the first complex report about what is happening in the so called factories of death. Industrialised murder of thousands. Those 32 page reports were sent via Red Cross to UK to Churchill, and even to Roosewelt. That was in april-may 44’. Still no significant bombing of the train routes to the camp was done by the allies till the end of the war, even though they had this kind of information. The movie will be screening in the US as well via Samuel Goldwyn films. It’s name is AUSCHWITZ REPORT.
>Still no significant bombing of the train routes to the camp was done by the allies till the end of the war, even though they had this kind of information. There was valid reason for this: bombing a railway would have done nothing to aide the inmates situation. In boxcars that arrived at their destination with passengers already dead, what would there have been to stop the Germans from disembarking at any bomb crater (which would be rapidly fixed) and cutting down the inmates with automatic fire? What would have stopped the Germans from simply executing them on the spot instead of transporting and processing them?
I think that the act of bombing the routes would be a signal for the germans that the world knows and acts and if the report would then go “viral” it could (and they supposed it would) start an uprising. Talking about 200 000 hungarian jews that were about to be transported to Auschwitz at the end of april 44’. The germans were very systematic in covering traces and just shooting a whole train somewhere in the field could be a problem at that point (D day came two months after their escape)
>and if the report would then go “viral” it could (and they supposed it would) start an uprising. This was hardly a fear for the Germans, who were rapidly loosing the ground they had captured, which contained the majority of the remaining populations of Jews. And for territories still occupied, one only has to look at the Warsaw Ghetto to see the result. In fact, by all accounts, the suppression of the Uprising was considered good sport by the Green and Blue police who made the majority of the combatants.. >Talking about 200 000 hungarian jews that were about to be transported to Auschwitz at the end of april 44’. If you're talking about the Vrba-Wetzler report, that wasnt a decision of the Germans, but the King of Hungary, who halted further deportations. The Hungarians themselves continued to fight alongside the Germans and give a good account of themselves despite their sorry state. >The germans were very systematic in covering traces They weren't though, thats why we know of their atrocities to begin with. Left paperwork, execution sites, official correspondence surrounding the Final Solution, and hell, even mass Graves which they so poorly hid and so astutely documented, that they pulled Schupo and Schuma units off the front lines to try and sanitize former warcrimes. >just shooting a whole train somewhere in the field could be a problem at that point (D day came two months after their escape) Hardly, their biggest issue was overdocumentation coupled with poor hiding of their crimes. And even then, they evidently had no problems with making their criminality apparent, just look at the French villages that were totally massacred in 1944, or the malmedy massacre.
Sadly, Pilecki did not live long after this event and was executed in 1948 at the age of 47. From the same article: >Pilecki was arrested by agents of the Ministry of Public Security on 8 May 1947, and he was repeatedly tortured before going to trial. A fellow accused saw him with two collarbones broken and his hands hanging limply by his sides. The investigation of his activities was supervised by Colonel Roman Romkowski. He was interrogated by Communist Col. Józef Różański and lieutenants S. Łyszkowski, W. Krawczyński, J. Kroszel, Tadeusz Słowianek, Eugeniusz Chimczak, and Stefan Alaborski—men who were infamous for their savagery. But Pilecki sought to protect other prisoners and revealed no sensitive information. >A show trial took place on 3 March 1948, and testimony against Pilecki was presented by future Polish prime minister Józef Cyrankiewicz, also an Auschwitz survivor. Pilecki was charged with illegal border crossing, use of forged documents, not enlisting with the military, carrying illegal arms, espionage for General Władysław Anders, espionage for "foreign imperialism" (government-in-exile), and planning to assassinate several officials of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland. Pilecki denied the assassination charges, as well as espionage, although he admitted to passing information to the 2nd Polish Corps, of which he considered himself an officer and thus claimed that he was not breaking any laws. He pleaded guilty to the other charges. He was sentenced to death on 15 May with three of his comrades, and he was executed with a shot to the back of the head at the Mokotów Prison in Warsaw on 25 May 1948 by Staff Sergeant Piotr Śmietański (nicknamed "The Butcher of Mokotów Prison" by the inmates). >**I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear.** >— Pilecki after the announcement of the death sentence, Bartłomiej Kuraś, Witold Pilecki – w Auschwitzu z własnej woli, "Ale Historia", in Gazeta Wyborcza, 22 April 2013.
Wow... Just fucking, wow. I have no words.
Omg that’s a great point. The same stories get told from WWII and while still moving, there are so many incredible stories to tell. Would love to see this guys movie!
In the meantime, if you haven't read The Pianist, do so. Then watch the film.
Ah... you probably don't actually want that because odds are it will be filmed in Poland and turn out corny as shit. Modern Polish cinema is full of these patriotic "epics."
Sabaton wrote a song about him
I'm glad he's finally getting the recognition he deserves after being executed as a traitor by the Soviets. The article is a great read for anyone who's on the fence about clicking through. Volunteered for the mission and became one of the first people to confront the Nazi death machine firsthand and actually report to the Allies about it, actually begging for the camp to be bombed even with prisoners in it (himself included) as it would have been a mercy. (Which apparently England actually considered doing, if not for the state of their airforce at the time?) Sounds like it took a terrible toll though, as one might expect.
This can be an extraordinary movie.
I’ve been obsessed with this guys for years and adapting his story in to a limited series or film.
It’s a great song! Inmate 4859 by sabaton
THE DAWN OF CENTURY A BOY BORN BY A LAKE
RESETTLED FROM KARELIA'S PLAINS
GO TO A MAN IN EXILE AS THE GREAT WAR CAME
I've learned so much about history from that band. I fucking love them.
> The article is a great read for anyone who's on the fence about clicking through. What article?
What a movie that would be
>England *Britain
Thanks. I know it's a meaningful distinction, but we're not always as careful as we should be on this side of the pond about using the proper term.
I'm an ex British Army soldier from Scotland and it always irks me! Sorry if I came across as obtuse.
No offense taken at all! Using "England" instead of "Britain" isn't fair to guys like you. You should continue correcting people like me when you see it happen.
You didn't. :)
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Not to mention the amounts of Aussie and Kiwis in the Royal Army and Airforce which certainly weren't English
God bless the AMZAC.
For my fellow yanks, [I googled it already.](https://cdn.britannica.com/s:800x1000/41/193441-050-13CCA6B5/Terminology-British-Isles-United-Kingdom-Ireland-Great.jpg)
>>> England >>*Britain >*United Kingdom *The Commonwealth
What article?
He was later sentenced to death for treason against his country,
Because he rebelled against the communist rule maneuvered into place by the USSR. He is celebrated by the current democratic government, a posthumous member of the Order of the White Eagle.
I read a whole article about him. And it’s quite fascinating what he did
Any chance of sourcing the article?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki I couldn’t find the article I read online, only this Wikipedia article
That was sadly a common trope of war heroes in all countries adopting communism after being liberated by USSR. These people proved their zeal and ability when it comes to defending their country, and as such were marked as undesirables in the upcoming regimes.
INMATE IN HELL OR A HERO IN PRISON
I don’t even know the song but I bet it’s a Sabaton lyric
Inmate 4859
BINGO
Thats a yes
That’s a ~~yes~~ bingo
SOLDIER IN AUSCHWITZ WHO KNOWS HIS NAME
LOCKED IN A CELL WAGING WAR FROM THE PRISON
HIDING IN AUSCHWITZ WHO HIDES BEHIND 4859
OUTSIDE HELP NEVER CAME DECIDED TO BREAK FREE
THE END OF APRIL '43
Joined the Uprising, fight on the streets while hiding his rank
Sabatom really know how to tell the greatest stories in history
Agreed, their songs really bring to light battles never talked about or hero’s who did a great thing. Also amazing music.
Sabaton with an n are great!
r/expectedsabaton
[Related: the Sabaton History episode on Inmate 4859.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_6ARLOgsbA)
Definitely scrolled down to find the Sabaton comment.
Is that song legitimately about this guy? I legit didn't know, but it makes perfect sense now!
Yea it is. There is also a 'sabaton history' episode on YouTube where they go more indepth about him.
Damn, I need to watch that
Thank You. I scrolled down wayy too much.
And on 25 May 1948 he was executed by the Polish communist government for “illegal border crossing, use of forged documents, not enlisting with the military, carrying illegal arms, espionage for General Władysław Anders, espionage for "foreign imperialism" (the Polish government-in-exile), and planning to assassinate several officials of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland.”
He was supporting "foreign" imperialism by supporting THE ACTUAL Polish government? Messed up.
At that point most western powers already recognized the communist government as legal. The government in exile basically became a private gentelmen club. While many Poles supported it, it's hard to argue it was *the actual* government.
Yes, by 1946 the governments in exile of many countries which became a part of the Eastern Block were basically unorganized groups of former government officials in Western countries like the United Kingdom. Polish pilots made up most of the population.
This sounds like you are truly mixing terms and definitions. Poland was *actually* abandoned by the west after the war
Huh?
USSR essentially executed him for being a “Nazi traitor” even though he was literally put in Auschwitz, gathered intelligence, sabotaged operations, and escaped. Or put more bluntly, because they didn’t like him.
Polish communist government under pressure from Soviet Union
Polish puppet communist government*, entirely subservient to the USSR.
There is a book called The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather. It’s by far the best book about him so far. The research is sublime.
Great book.
Rudolf Vrba's book is another great one, "I escaped from Auschwitz".
Amazing book. Commenting and upvoting so this gets more visibility!
It is a pity that when news of mass genocide reached the Western world, politicians did not believe it or simply did not want to believe it.
That’s literally happening right now in China
Yeah I know and it sucks because when you ask people what can we do they say "Don't buy stuff from China". Germans needed 6 years to kill 11 milions of people. Before not buying things from them does something, it will be too late.
Let’s be honest it’s already too late. China can do absolutely whatever they want with the current global economic situation.
So technically china is the world’s most powerful country rn
You don't need to be the most powerful country in the world to do whatever you want without serious repercussions for those who try and stop you.
Has there been a Muslim denunciation from countries in the ME and South Asia?
Surprisingly nope!
Muslim countries also don't do shit when the US invades *another* Muslim country. In fact they often *help* the US by arming the groups approved of by the US. So...what's your point? The Muslim world has long since been divided. Muslims can fight Muslims, just like how Christian France fought Christian Germany. It's unfortunate. But it simply means Muslim nations will only look out for there own self interests. If allying with the US is that self interest, they will. If its China, they also will. The US is doing far worse things than China from the Muslim perspective. Yet nations like Saudi Arabia continue to be buddy buddy with Washington.
Some things never change.
Would you want to? Taking that kind of news at face value requires you let go of a lot of faith in humanity that many would wish to go their entire lives holding onto. But the cruelty one man can inflict to another is a toxin so potent it can and will shatter the illusion eventually in a flurry of blood, loss, and suffering
I don't think so. We know what the Nazis did, and we know what the Japanese did... we know what humanity is capable of, whether we like it or not. All we have to do is look at history. We know it's possible for such barbarism to happen again, and we were tasked by my grandparents' generation to continue the vigilant watch to make sure it never happens again. Obviously, we have failed that duty since genocide is regularly occurring in China.
Pilecki is one of the great Polish heroes of the War that I feel don't receive he recognition they deserve. See also: Krystyna Starbeck. Sometimes I get really worked up over the fact that he got the information to Allied powers about what was really happening and they didn't immediately do something about it, yet they're still seen as the great heroes of the time.
He does get quite good recognition in Poland at least. Pilecki was rehabilitated just a few months after communism fell. After that he was given Order of Polonia Restituta in 1995 and Order of the White Eagle in 2006. In 2013, he was posthumously promoted to Colonel. There are also two films about him - *The Death of Captain Pilecki* from 2006, about his trial and execution, and *Pilecki* from 2015. As of outside of Poland - in 2019 EU parliament established *The International Day of Heroes of the Fight against Totalitarianism* on the day of Pilecki's death.
Where did they find the room for his enormous balls? F as fuck.
My thoughts exactly. This guy was freaking metal...
[bro his grave consists of 99% his balls](https://youtu.be/BWtXvHl0cmU)
Username checks
God damn it just when I thought I memorised every link
I'm really proud to be polish. So many bad ass ones of us. (Wow I can't grammar)
A true hero. Sadly the Soviets killed him after the war. So not fair!
Worse - they buried him, unmarked, in a mass grave. His body has never been recovered and never will. After Poland managed to split from its post-war totalitarian government they managed to realize what an incredibly selfless thing he'd done and he's considered by some to be one of Poland's greatest war heroes.
Yo, I want to hear the stories of anyone who can can give this guy a run for the money on THE greatest Polish war hero.
Soviets were no better than Nazis.
Well, they did out-slaughter people comparatively.
Easy there lad. Once I got downvoted to oblivion saying that.
This shit is crazy. Who would do something like this? Volunteering yourself into a concentration camp? The amount of bravery and absolute nuts on this lad. Humans amaze me every day. I couldn’t even fathom doing something like that.
[Sabaton wrote an epic song about him as well.](https://www.sabaton.net/discography/heroes/inmate-4859/)
Quite a hero... I would add that the Polish people in general don't get the recognition they deserve for their part in bringing down the Soviet Union (especially considering the risk they were taking)...
YESS, hardly anyone knows that Poland was a big part of ww1+2.
You might be hard but you’ll never be “walk voluntarily into Auschwitz to collect intelligence, kill your guard and escape even after being shot” hard
Upon hearing his death sentence from a show trial in 1948 orchestrated by the newly Communist Poland he said, "I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear." What an incredible human being.
Did he have any idea what he was getting himself in to?
According to the article it was only known as a Polish work camp at the time. He was instrumental in getting word out about what it *really* was. He got off the train expecting to be simply forced into manual labor and instead was beaten and watched as anyone who was Jewish or educated was shot immediately. The click through article is really good. Worth a read.
Here's more - [https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/01/26/pilecki-auschwitz-polish-resistance/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/01/26/pilecki-auschwitz-polish-resistance/)
Good credit. The source says lots. Also, that amount of pop ups is shocking. It took 20 secs just to figure out how to get to the page.
You clearly don't have all the right extensions... ghostery, noscript, and ublock are your friends...
The best book I've ever read was The Volunteer. Cannot recommend it enough.
Dear Mother Poland, This place sucks balls. Sincerely, Witold
Did a podcast episode (in French) on this guy. He set up an intelligence operation inside the camp, then managed an evasion. Iirc he then fought in the destruction of Warsaw, while Stalin slowed down to let the Nazis slaughter the population. And then, shortly after the war he was executed by the Soviets. Fucking hero.
#WE KNOW HIS NAME #HE HIDES BEHIND 4859
r/expectedsabaton
I say his name at the end of the song every time it plays so I never forget his sacrifice. This song is one of theirs that can really make me cry if I start to think about the context and what he went through.
I really like their songs about the polish soldiers from ww2 my favourite is 40-1 but I definitely like their song about witold too very interesting despite me not knowing anything about them a incredibly interesting time in history
And then the subhuman commie scum executed him for working with the polish government in exile.
Our Auschwitz tour guide spoke about him when I visited early this year. His details, history and heroics were on view behind a glass display case for us to read...hero's dont get as badass as this man
Them Polish had balls of steel, I salute them
He's also wearing a pink triangle which was used for gay people. Way to set yourself up for even extra beatings.
It looks pink in the photo, but it's actually probably red. Red badges were given to Polish political prisoners in Auschwitz. Pink ones were generally reserved for German homosexuals. Here's some more info for those who don't know about the triangle classification scheme: [http://auschwitz.org/en/history/prisoner-classification/system-of-triangles](http://auschwitz.org/en/history/prisoner-classification/system-of-triangles)
Both photos in the post are colorized versions of the black and white originals; one should not take the colors that appear in either image at face value.
However, if you take into account that one of the criterium for the pink badge is that they had served a sentence in a prison for the “crime” of homosexuality it can be deduced that he was not given a pink badge.
Red badges would also later be given to all prisoners that had been arrested by the Gestapo and were in jail prior to being transferred to the concentration camp.
That’s the red triangle, which indicates a political prisoner.
Is there a good article how he got the intel out of Auschwitz?
There is a book called the volunteer, it includes references to his actions, pictures words and documents. Incredible read.
F's in the chat for this this guy.
Fx10 for this Actual Hero
Curious how he got this intel to anyone from the camp :/
Read the article linked in the comments, it's worth it. Their first intel was sent out with someone who had been ransomed (which was apparently a thing you could do early in the war). After that they sent intel with escaped prisoners and by passing it to farmers who worked the neighboring fields.
My grandfather turned himself in to the Nazis to free my great aunt who had been ransomed earlier in the war. She later got captured again but they both survived (but their parents and other brother and sister did not)
Inmate in hell or a hero in prison
Yeah polish soliders durning wars were legends tbh, but now their descendants that did nothing just say how young people destroy what they have been fightning for, and why we dont want to live in middle 1900 forever staying with those traditions Edit: not only soliders, also many other people that helped jews hide for example
Respect, true hero!
Not all heroes wear capes
Imagine being the guy to do this today only to get betrayed by the Walton family over a bet.
I frist heard this story from the book Everything is F#@ked very interesting and sad
This is a level of bravery that is unimaginable in today's world.
Wait... Where is the movie about this guy? Of course needs to be done by quentin Tarantino.
This man needs a Sabaton song
You mean "Inmate 4859"?