The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery
Language: English
Pages: 460
ISBN: 1607720108
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In 1940, the Polish Underground wanted to know what was happening inside the recently opened Auschwitz concentration camp. Polish army officer Witold Pilecki volunteered to be arrested by the Germans and reported from inside the camp. His intelligence reports, smuggled out in 1941, were among the first eyewitness accounts of Auschwitz atrocities: the extermination of Soviet POWs, its function as a camp for Polish political prisoners, and the “final solution” for Jews. Pilecki received brutal treatment until he escaped in April 1943; soon after, he wrote a brief report. This book is the first English translation of a 1945 expanded version. In the foreword, Poland's chief rabbi states, “If heeded, Pilecki's early warnings might have changed the course of history.” Pilecki's story was suppressed for half a century after his 1948 arrest by the Polish Communist regime as a “Western spy.” He was executed and expunged from Polish history. Pilecki writes in staccato style but also interjects his observations on humankind's lack of progress: “We have strayed, my friends, we have strayed dreadfully... we are a whole level of hell worse than animals!” These remarkable revelations are amplified by 40 b&w photos, illus., and maps
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On the block.” I had noticed that fewer people returned from work every day, and I knew that they had been “finished off ” at one task or another, but now I was to discover the hard way what a day “in the camp” looked like for a normal häftling. Everyone had to work. Only the stubendiensts [room supervisors] could remain on the block. We all slept side by side on straw mattresses laid out on the floor. Initially we had no bunks at all. Everyone’s day began with a gong at 4:20 a.m. in summer and.
Too! Enough!” He rushed into the room behind me with his club. “Where are they?” Two of them were lying by the wall panting heavily, the third one was kneeling in the corner praying. “Was macht er? [What’s he doing?]” he shouted at me. “Er betet [He’s praying].” “He’s praying?!! Who taught him to do that?” “Das weiss ich nicht [I don’t know],” I replied. He rushed over to the praying man and started to insult him and shout at him that he was an idiot . . . that there was no God. . . that he, not.
Working with 13 “Zofia” [Zofia Szczerbowska] (in Stare Stawy), he must inevitably have sensed that something was going on. He did not betray us and from the moment that he received a bench beating from the camp authorities for supposedly “failing to notice” that inmates were being tossed additional food by the local population (loaves of bread)—the authorities never suspected anything more—he became a firm friend. Thus was I putting together and “knitting,” having what for conditions at that time.
Dering] was very worried about me and taught me how to fake an illness which was very common at the time in the krankenbau [hospital]—meningitis—which might spare me questioning. He tried to find out what was going on from one of the SS (who had formerly been an NCO in the Polish Army)25 and asked that they not beat his friend (me), for I was sick. Dr. 2 [Władysław Dering] was already slowly consolidating his position in the hospital, he was valued as a good doctor 25 He would likely have been.
Than one hundred pages of singlespaced lines, with miniscule margins, typed on a manual typewriter with numerous handwritten interlineations. In this translation of Pilecki’s Report, we benefit not only from Mr. Garliński’s linguistic skills, but also from the added dimension of his extensive scholarship and knowledge of literature, history and the military, as well as his personal connection to the material. Pilecki’s 1945 Report had no formal title; we have chosen to call this translation The.