Lessons from Witold Pilecki, the Polish spy who voluntarily entered and operated in Auschwitz

International Holocaust Day is marked every year on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. This year marks the 80th year since the event, which came too late for millions of Jewish people. The rescue could, and should, have come much sooner. 

When it gradually became known that people were being taken to camps and disappearing, a Polish operative named Witold Pilecki was tasked with the unenviable job of finding out what was going on. He willingly went into Auschwitz. 

In a BBC documentary, Pilecki’s nephew describes the day when his uncle was rounded up and taken to the death camp. 

“The concierge, Mr. Jan Wilianski, came running to our door. He said, “Mr Witold, the Germans are taking men from their houses—we have a good hiding spot in the cellar.” And my uncle said, “Mr. Jan, this time I won’t be using it.” My uncle prepared himself and got dressed. There was knocking at the door…” 

The nephew relays that as his uncle was being taken, he understood that it had all been planned. Witold Pilecki immediately had his teeth smashed out as he was hit in the face with a bat, and suffered the horrors of the Holocaust, which are now well-documented. He suffered beatings, torture, and starvation along with all the others imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, “He began sending information about what was going on inside the camp and confirming that the Nazis were seeking the extermination of the Jews to Britain and the United States as early as 1941. Pilecki used a courier system that the Polish Resistance operated throughout occupied Europe to channel the reports to the Allies.”

While Winston Churchill is lauded for taking on Hitler, rejecting the appeasement policy of his predecessors, the Jewish Virtual Library points to evidence that the allies had access to the truth of what was going on much earlier than many seem to realize:

“Documents released from the Polish Archives that provided details of these reports again raised questions as to why the Allies, particularly Winston Churchill, never did anything to put an end to the atrocities being committed that they learned of so early in the war.”

Michael Schudrich, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, described Pilecki as “an example of inexplicable goodness at a time of inexplicable evil. There is ever-growing awareness of Poles helping Jews in the Holocaust, and how they paid with their lives, like Pilecki. We must honor these examples and follow them today in the parts of the world where there are horrors again.”