Witold Pilecki

Witold Pilecki (1901 – 1948) was a Polish cavalry officer and one of the greatest heroes of the Second World War. In September 1940, with the approval of his underground commanders, Pilecki deliberately stepped into a German street round-up (łapanka) in Warsaw under a false identity to be sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Inside Auschwitz, under prisoner number 4859, Pilecki created the underground military network *Związek Organizacji Wojskowej* (ZOW), stealing medicine, organizing mutual aid, and transmitting courier intelligence reports to the Polish Government-in-Exile detailing the construction of the gas chambers and mass murder. In April 1943, realizing the Allies would not launch an airborne assault on the camp, Pilecki staged a daring nighttime escape through the camp bakery. He subsequently fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. After the war, refusing to leave Poland, he was arrested by the Soviet-backed communist secret police (UB), brutally tortured, and executed following a show-trial in 1948.