I saw in the Kedyw 70 on a list of people to be liquidated the name of Wilhelm Westrych, who had once saved me in Auschwitz. I knew that he was a bastard, but even if I had wanted to do something about it, it was now too late, since there was a note next to his name: “carried out” and a date...
On the street I bumped into Sławek [Sławek Szpakowski], with whom I had once wielded a pickaxe in Auschwitz, dreaming of the dinner he would one day stand me in Warsaw. We were both optimists and, as one had said in those days, we had unrealistic dreams, yet now here we both were in Warsaw and still alive.
He was carrying a parcel and on seeing me almost dropped it.
I had dinner at his place several times and the menu was the one we had devised there in hell...
I was staying in the same house from which I had gone to Auschwitz in 1940 and where I had been writing letters from camp to Mrs. E.O. [Eleonora Ostrowska], but one floor up.
It afforded me the satisfaction of a certain challenge to the authorities.
For the duration of the Occupation no one turned up at Mrs. E.O.’s [Eleonora Ostrowska’s] about my disappearance from Auschwitz. Neither did anyone go to Jasio’s sister, nor to Edek’s family.
In the autumn of 1943, I presented my plan for an operation at Auschwitz to Kedyw’s Head of Plans (“Wilk,” “Zygmunt” [Major Karol Jabłoński]) who said to me:
“When the war’s over I’ll show you a file full of reports on Auschwitz, all yours are there too...”
I wrote my final report on Auschwitz on 20 typewritten pages, and on the last page those chaps who had brought out reports wrote in their own hand whom they had told what and when.
I collected eight such statements, for the rest of them were either no longer alive or not in Warsaw.
In addition to my work in a certain department of High Command, I was busy taking care of families of Auschwitz inmates, both those who were still alive and those who had perished.
No. 86 [Aleksander Paliński] helped me with this. We received money for this work from a well-organized cell, consisting of three ladies 182 [names unknown], who devoted a great deal of effort to inmates and their families.
Through these ladies I was one day informed that there was someone in whose operational area Auschwitz lay. That this fellow was a real “pistol,” that he was running a first-rate operation and that we might be able to get in touch with the inmates in Auschwitz through him, since communications in the field had recently broken down.
This gentleman was leaving and I couldn’t see him; however, since he was so effective and claimed that he could get in touch with the inmates...I wanted to help him and provided the name of a friend, an Auschwitz inmate, Murzyn [Leon Murzyn], and that he could use Tomasz’s name saying, for clarification, that Tomasz had gone away for Easter.
Among the sound fellows, I met several fellows from Auschwitz who were not at all sound (they had been released earlier) and who claimed that I too had been released.
On the 10th of June 1944, on Marszałkowska Street someone suddenly opened his arms saying:
“I don’t believe that they could’ve released you from Auschwitz!”
I replied that I didn’t think that they could have released him either. It was Olek 167 [Aleksander Bugajski]. Like a cat, this lucky devil always landed on all fours. He had wangled his way out of the Penal Company as a doctor and had been shipped off to Ravensbrück,71 from which he had escaped.
The ladies 182 [names unknown] informed me that the gentleman who worked in the Auschwitz area was going there again and would like to see me.
I hurried off to meet him. I arrived a few minutes before the gentleman. The ladies remained discreetly in another room, awaiting the outcome of this meeting of aces.
I waited for a while, assuming that some kind of eagle would appear. The door opened and... in rolled a chubby ball, small, bald and with a turned-up nose. But, outward appearances are misleading. We sit down and this gentleman briskly gets things moving by saying:
“Now what if I take...a board... and paint a black man on it... and I take this board... with the painted black man... and creep up to the Auschwitz wall... ?”
I stood up, excused myself and went through to the ladies:
“Who’s this you’ve put me in touch with? Can one have a serious conversation with him?”
“But of course, he’s a wonderful organizer and he...,” they reeled off his rank.
I returned thinking that this must be his way of breaking the ice and vowed to be patient. The gentleman, when I had resumed my seat at the table, seeing that the black man had not really worked, said:
“Well... what if instead of a black man I painted St. Thomas... or... an Easter cake?!”
I have to admit that I was cracking up inside from laughter and thought that I might break the chair into the wood of whose arms I was pressing my fingers... to stop myself from bursting out with laughter.
I got up and said that unfortunately I could not continue our conversation that day, since I had an urgent appointment elsewhere.
I am not making this up; this really happened.
At the end of July 1944, a week before the outbreak of the [Warsaw] Uprising, someone stopped me as I was riding a bicycle along Filtrowa Street, calling out “Hello!” I stopped unwillingly, as one did in those days of underground work. A man came over. At first I did not recognize him, but this lasted only a moment. It was my Auschwitz friend, Captain 116 [Zygmunt Pawłowicz].
Jasiek and I took part in the [1944 Warsaw] Uprising, serving in the same sector. There is a description of our actions and of my friend’s death in the history of 1 Battalion “Group–Chrobry II”.
Edek took five bullets during an operation, but made it.
My friend 25 [Stefan Bielecki] was seriously wounded during the Uprising.
During it I also ran into 44 [Wincenty Gawron].
Later, somewhere else, I met some fellows who had been in Auschwitz until almost the end (January 1945): 183 [name unknown] and 184 [name unknown]. It was music to my ears to hear them talk about the fallout from the bakery escape. About how the camp had had a good laugh that the authorities had been bamboozled, and about the fact that no reprisals had been taken against any of the lads! With the exception of the SS men who had been on duty, who had done time in the bunker.
I now mention the number of people who died in Auschwitz.
When I left Auschwitz the then-current number was a bit over 121,000. About 23,000 had been shipped out and released. About 97,000 inmates with prison numbers had been killed.
This has nothing to do with the people who were sent en masse to the gas chambers and burnt, without being formally processed into the camp.
On the basis of calculations made by the kommandos working in the vicinity, there were over 2 million such victims up to the time of my departure from Auschwitz.
I offer these numbers cautiously so as not to exaggerate and so that these daily numbers can be carefully examined.
Fellows who were there longer than I was and who witnessed the daily gassing of 8,000 people give a number of somewhere around 5 million.72
S U M M E R 1 9 4 5
I would now like to say what I felt when I was back amongst the living, coming from a place about which one can honestly say: he who entered died; he who got out was reborn. What was my impression not of the very finest or the worst amongst us, but of the general mass of humanity, when I had been reborn on earth?
At times I felt that I was wandering through a great house and would suddenly open the door to a room in which there were only children: “... Ah, the children are playing...”
Yes, the leap was too great from what for us was important and what people, fussing, enjoying themselves and worrying, think is important.
But that is not all...A kind of widespread dishonesty had now become all too evident. There was some destructive agent at work trying to blur the boundary between falsehood and truth, and it was there for all to see.
&nb
sp; The truth had become so elastic that it was stretched to cover everything that had become convenient to hide.
The boundary between honesty and common dishonesty had been meticulously blurred.
What I have written so far in these few dozen pages is unimportant, especially for those who will read them just for thrills, but here I would like to write in letters larger unfortunately than any on the typewriter for all those heads, which beneath their perfectly parted hair contain nothing but the proverbial sawdust and who can surely thank their mothers for only their well-formed skulls stopping the sawdust seeping out: let them take a moment to consider their own lives, let them look around and begin on their own to fight the falsehood, the lies and the self-interest, which are artfully presented as meaningful, the truth and even a great cause.
1 Pilecki is referring to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, not the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. Translator’s note.
2 At that time, Fritz Seidler was Acting Deputy Camp Commandant. He later became Deputy Camp Commandant. Translator’s note.
3 As the central camp expanded and eight new blocks were added in the summer of 1941, some of the blocks had their numbers changed: e.g., Block 18 became Block 26. Translator’s note.
4 Technically, a Schutzhäftling was an inmate or prisoner held under indefinite detention pursuant to the Nazi German law of Schutzhaft (protective custody), while a Häftling was held for a definite term of incarceration. Except in formal situations, the term Häftling was generally used for all the inmates in Auschwitz. Translator’s note.
5 Winkel in German and winkiel in Polish. Translator’s note.
6 Also known as conscientious objectors. Translator’s note.
7 Pilecki is here referring to Adam Różycki, a Kapo with a murderous reputation. Translator’s note.
8 Tajna Armia Polska (The Polish Secret Army) was an underground resistance organization formed on the 9th of November 1939. It eventually became integrated into the ZWZ (Związek Walki Zbrojnej [The Union for Armed Combat])—the precursor of the Armia Krajowa (AK, or Home Army). Translator’s note.
9 Dr. Władysław Dering was a controversial figure who in 1964 sued the writer Leon Uris in Britain for libel, Uris having claimed in his novel Exodus that Dering had performed 17,000 medical experiments without anesthetics on inmates in Auschwitz. Although Dering won the case after an eighteen-day trial, the court awarded him minimal damages and ordered him to pay costs. Translator’s note.
10 The key to this 1945 Report has not been found; see Translator’s Introductory Note. In his autumn 1943 report (Raport W), Pilecki has Eugeniusz Obojski instead of Alfred Stössel in his first “five.” Translator’s note.
11 A mistake on the part of Pilecki. In fact the report was carried by Aleksander Wielopolski, and indeed Burski appears later in this 1945 Report. Translator’s note.
12 The first transport of Polish inmates arrived in June 1940. Translator’s note.
13 An area alongside a railroad siding where building materials were unloaded and stored. Translator’s note.
14 They were likely to have been Polish citizens of German descent. Translator’s note.
15 From the song “Nie dbam jaka spadnie kara” (“I don’t care how they punish me”), the lyrics of which were written by the celebrated Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz and date from the 1830s when Poles were exiled to Siberia by the Russian Tsarist authorities after the failed insurrection of 1830–31. Translator’s note.
16 An edible root. Translator’s note.
17 Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916) is one of Poland’s most beloved novelists. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1905. Among his best-known works is the novel Quo Vadis. Translator’s note.
18 Loosely translated as “runaway” or “scarper.” The inmate, Tadeusz Wiejowski got away, but was rearrested in the autumn of 1941 and shot. Translator’s note.
19 Pilecki is mistaken as to Palitzsch’s rank. He was not an Obersturmführer (the equivalent in the German SS of First Lieutenant), but he was in fact a Hauptscharführer (the equivalent in the German SS of Master Sergeant). Translator’s note.
20 More than likely this is a veiled allusion to the Polish officers who had spent the war as POWs. Translator’s note.
21 The political department was run by the Gestapo. Translator’s note.
22 Approximately 31 inches square and 6 1/2 feet high. Translator’s note.
23 Equivalent to 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Normal temperature would be 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Translator’s note.
24 Earlier in this 1945 Report, Pilecki gives Burski’s address as no. 58. Translator’s note.
25 He would likely have been a Polish citizen of German descent whom the Nazis had conscripted during the Occupation. Translator’s note.
26 Three of the six Kupiec brothers (Antoni, Jan and Władysław) survived the camp; three (Bolesław, Józef and Karol) did not. Translator’s note.
27 No relation to the author. Translator’s note.
28 In Pilecki’s autumn 1943 report (Raport W), neither Jan Kupiec nor Antoni Woźniak are mentioned, whereas Mikołaj Skornowicz is included. Translator’s note.
29 In his autumn 1943 report (Raport W), Pilecki has Wincenty Gawron, Stanisław Gutkiewicz and Stanisław Stawiszyński, instead of Stefan Bielecki, Stanisław Maringe, Jerzy Poraziński and Szczepan Rzeczkowski. Translator’s note.
30 Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw. Translator’s note.
31 Which we never learn. Translator’s note.
32 A quotation from Adam Mickiewicz’s poem “Oda do Młodości” (“Ode to Youth”). Translator’s note.
33 The name Rajsko was a camp pun on the Polish word for paradise—raj. Hereafter Pilecki often uses Rajsko for Birkenau. Translator’s note.
34 Prisoners selected to die for an escape often were not shot, but sent to the bunker to be starved to death. A truly terrible punishment. Translator’s note.
35 This was the famous case of Father Maksymilian Kolbe, who took the place of Franciszek Gajowniczek, who had a family. Afterwards, the camp authorities more or less left Gajowniczek alone and he survived. Translator’s note.
36 Commemorates the ratification of the Polish Constitution on the 3rd of May 1791. Translator’s note.
37 Polish Independence Day, dating from the 11th of November 1918. Translator’s note.
38 Marshal Józef Piłsudski’s name day. Translator’s note.
39 A legendary Cossack bard and mystic, who figures in the play Wesele by Stanisław Wyspiański. Translator’s note.
40 Earlier in this Report, Pilecki said that he had moved to Block 25 in October. Translator’s note.
41 Pilecki conf lates the Konfederacja Zbrojna (The Armed Confederation—KZ) with the Kon-federacja Narodu (The Confederation of the Nation—KN). Translator’s note.
42 Lieutenant General Stefan “Grot” Rowecki commanded the Polish Home Army (the Armia Krajowa, or AK) until his arrest by the Gestapo in June 1943. He was executed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp by the Germans in August 1944. Translator’s note.
43 Pilecki is referring here to his decision to return to Poland in 1945. Translator’s note.
44 This translator is unaware of either the Americans or the British ever using such methods. The Soviets were another matter. Translator’s note.
45 In the original typed Report, Pilecki wrote the 19th and then amended it by hand to the 16th. Other edited versions have the 19th. Translator’s note.
46 Some sources give his rank as Colonel. In Pilecki’s original it was Captain. Translator’s note.
47 Strictly speaking, he was a Lieutenant Colonel. Translator’s note.
48 The country Canada was seen as a symbol of wealth. Translator’s note.
49 His name was Izak Gąska. Translator’s note.
50 Józef Garliński in Oświęcim Walczący (London: Odnowa, 1974), p. 172, footnote 120, believes this to have been a Soviet raid. Translator’s note.
51 On the 13th o
f September 1944, the Americans bombed the I.G. Farben works near the camp, killing fifteen SS men, forty inmates and thirty civilian workers. However, this attack was directed against an industrial installation and not the camp itself, and it was not intended to help camp inmates to escape. Translator’s note.
52 As used here, the correct German question should be: “Wohin läufst du?” Translator’s note.
53 They in fact escaped on the 29th. Translator’s note.
54 This is a pun on the Polish word wic (meaning a joke, and pronounced “vits”) which is the final syllable of the mock Polish word “Auszwic”—a Polish phonetic equivalent of Auschwitz. Translator’s note.
55 A gravel pit in which members of the Penal Company worked. Translator’s note.
56 Poland’s highest award for gallantry. Translator’s note.
57 “Mądry Polak po szkodzie.” Translator’s note.
58 Some sources place it in February 1943. Translator’s note.
59 Some sources claim that a few inmates had discovered a disused underground fuel tank, which they equipped with electricity and a well-concealed periscope! However, it is unclear to what use they put it and indeed whether or not the story is actually true. Otherwise, Pilecki’s reference is obscure and, given Auschwitz’s location, odd to say the least. Furthermore, there is supposedly no record or trace of such an installation at the camp today. Translator’s note.
60 These are likely to have been Volksdeutscher. Translator’s note.
61 Probably abbreviations for arbeitsfähig (fit for work) and arbeitsunfähig (unfit for work). Translator’s note.
62 That would have been due south, and 180 degrees away from the northerly route which Bohdanowski recommended. Translator’s note.
63 Approximately 211 lbs. Translator's note.
64 More correctly: “Du hast Fleckfieber. Gehe schnell zum Krankenbau!” Translator’s note.
65 The Polish–Bolshevik War. Translator’s note.
66 It is unclear to whom Pilecki is referring, since the number is cut off at the edge of the page after the first two digits (11). Indeed, it could not have been 11, who was a Colonel, Tadeusz Reklewski, and who, in any event, had been transported to another camp in Germany a month earlier. It could have been Captain 114 [Tadeusz Paolone]. Translator’s note.
The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery Page 28