Witold Pilecki, one of the few to escape from the Auschwitz death camp in WW II has posthumously received the honorary citizenship of Oświęcim, the town where the Germans located the notorious concentration camp.

The Mayor of Oświęcim said that Pilecki’s life and actions should be better known not only to Poles but to people all the over the world.

“He devoted all his life to the struggle for the freedom of Poland,” he said at a ceremony yesterday.

Witold Pilecki’s daughter, Zofia Pilecka-Optułowicz, said during the ceremony that Auschwitz was her father’s first station of the Cross to Poles.

“He does not have a grave. It seems to me that he is still alive thanks to young people and the schools, squares and streets which bear his name,” she said.

An exhibition documenting Witold Pilecki’s life is on display in the main market square of Oświęcim.

Witold Pilecki was 18 when he took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920. He was twice awarded the Cross of Valour for gallantry. Soon after the Second World War broke out he co-founded the Secret Polish Army, which was one of the first underground organizations in Poland, later incorporated into the Home Army, the largest resistance force in Poland.

In September 1940 Pilecki allowed himself to be arrested by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz. He organized a conspiracy among the prisoners with the idea of an insurrection in the camp and managed to send reports from Auschwitz indicating that an extermination of European Jews was being prepared by the Germans.

In 1943, having escaped from Auschwitz, Pilecki reached Warsaw, and a year later fought in the Warsaw Rising. After the war he went to Italy and joined the Second Corps.

He was sent by the Polish intelligence to Poland as a spy. However, he was captured and later executed by the communist authorities in 1948.

His burial place has never been found. In 1990, he was rehabilitated and in 2008 received posthumously the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish state distinction.

In the book Six Faces of Courage, former leader of the British Labour Party and historian Michael Foot included Pilecki among the six greatest heroes of World War Two. (mk)

Thenews.pl |