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INTRODUCTION

THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT IN AUSCHWITZ

THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT IN AUSCHWITZ

INTRODUCTION

Organised clandestine activity took place at Auschwitz from the very beginning of its operation. Initially it was conducted by Polish political prisoners. Only when people deported from other European countries occupied by the Third Reich began to be imprisoned in the camp in mid-1941, and when it became a place of mass murder of Jews in the spring of 1942, did the inmate resistance movement also encompass inmates of other nationalities.

Gate with

Source: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (hereafter: PMA-B)

The gate to the former Auschwitz camp with the inscription reading Arbeit macht frei.

The operations of the national groups within the camp resistance movement were primarily focused on saving inmates from death, organising material aid in the form of medication, food and clothing, organising escapes, and passing on information about the crimes committed at Auschwitz.


One of the main masterminds of underground activity in the camp was Witold Pilecki, a second lieutenant in the reserve, who had already helped to set up the Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP), one of the first resistance organisations, in Warsaw in the autumn of 1939.

Secret Polish Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP) was set up on 9 November 1939, and was chiefly composed of military and civilian activists. Its commander was Major Jan Włodarkiewicz (pseudonym : Darwicz), while the post of organising inspector was held by Second Lieutenant Witold Pilecki (pseudonym: Witold). The intelligence network of the TAP concentrated on the observation of transport routes, on the gathering of information about German industrial production for military purposes, and about the repressive actions of the German occupant, including the crimes committed by the SS officers at Auschwitz.


In August 1940, after a number of TAP members were arrested in Warsaw and transported to Auschwitz, the command of the organisation held a briefing at which the idea emerged of having Witold Pilecki penetrate the camp and establish a clandestine organisation of the Poles imprisoned there.


Pilecki began to carry out the plan on 19 September 1940, as he was arrested during a street roundup in Warsaw. After being transported to Auschwitz, he established contact with the members of the TAP imprisoned there: Lieutenant-Colonel Władysław Surmacki, Dr Władysław Dering, Jan Dangel, Stanisław Maringe, and others. The secret organisation that Pilecki organised in the camp was called the Military Organisation (Organizacja Wojskowa, OW), and it maintained secret links with the High Command of the Union for Armed Struggle/Home Army (Komenda Główna Związku Walki Zbrojnej/Armia Krajowa, ZWZ/AK) in Warsaw.

In the late summer of 1940 the first news of mass deaths among Auschwitz inmates began to reach occupied Warsaw. At that time Witold Pilecki, using the pseudonym of Tomasz Serafiński, volunteered to infiltrate Auschwitz to set up a resistance network, provide liaison between the Polish underground and Poles imprisoned in the camp, transfer credible data about SS crimes, and later to prepare the camp to join the fight if favourable circumstances developed. The secret network was also intended to help the inmates inside Auschwitz, boost their spirits by disseminating news from the outside, provide food, clothing, and medications, and organise escapes.


Pilecki agreed on this plan with the commander of the Secret Polish Army, Major Jan Włodarek, and then knowingly let himself be caught by German policemen during a roundup in Warsaw’s Żoliborz district. He reached Auschwitz in the so-called Second Warsaw Transport on 22 September 1940.

A man in a Polish army uniform, smiling, standing in an orchard. Next to him is a woman, smiling, wearing a dark dress. Children standing in front of the couple: a younger boy, about two years old, a 4–5-year-old girl.

Source: A-BSM Archive (hereinafter: A-BSMA)

Cavalry Captain Witold Pilecki—participant in the first and second world wars, volunteer prisoner and creator of clandestine military activity at Auschwitz, fugitive from the camp, Home Army officer, participant in the Warsaw Uprising, inmate in Lamsdorf and Murnau camps, served in Italy after the Second World War in the 2nd Polish Corps led by General Władysław Anders. He was sentenced to death at the time of the Communist terror in Poland and murdered in Mokotów prison on 25 May 1948 with a shot to the back of the head. In the photo he is pictured with his wife and children shortly before the war.