Pilecki Institute Opens First US Location

The Pilecki Institute, based in Warsaw with outposts in Augustów, Poland, and in Berlin, recently signed a 15-year lease for 35,000 square feet at 88 Greenwich Street in New York City. It plans to open its New York facility in 2025. Click here for more details about the Pilecki Institute’s New York City lease.

The Pilecki Institute is named for the heroic World War II Polish army officer Witold Pilecki, who volunteered for an almost certainly suicidal undercover mission as a prisoner at Auschwitz. We translated Pilecki’s most comprehensive report on his Auschwitz mission, and published it in English for the first time under the title The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery.

After the war ended, Pilecki volunteered for another undercover mission—this time he went back into communist-controlled Poland to provide information to his army superiors. He operated for about two years before he was arrested, tortured, given a show trial, and executed by the Polish communist government.

The Pilecki Institute was established to facilitate the interdisciplinary and international analysis of issues and developments that were of key importance for the political history of the 20th century, namely the Nazi German and Soviet totalitarian regimes and the global consequences of their actions.

The Institute’s mission includes collection and preservation of documents, research, educational and cultural projects and events, and commemoration of Poles who sacrificed their lives to aid Jews under the brutal German occupation. Click here for more information about the Pilecki Institute.