September 19, 1940 – Witold Pilecki Begins His Undercover Mission at Auschwitz

Polish Army officer Captain Witold Pilecki volunteered for an almost certainly suicidal undercover mission for the Polish Underground: get himself arrested by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz, where his mission was to smuggle out intelligence about this new German concentration camp, and build a resistance organization among the prisoners.

Barely surviving nearly three years of brutality, starvation and disease, Pilecki accomplished his mission before escaping in April 1943. We translated and published Pilecki’s most comprehensive report to his Polish Army superiors on his Auschwitz mission under the title The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery.

Below is an excerpt from the book, describing the beginning of his mission (pp. 11–12):

The 19th of September 1940—the second street round-up in Warsaw.

There are a few people still alive who saw me go alone at 6:00 a.m. to the corner of Aleja Wojska and Felińskiego Street and join the “fives” of captured men drawn up by the SS.

On Plac Wilsona we were then loaded into trucks and taken to the Light Horse Guards Barracks.

After having our particulars taken down in the temporary office there, being relieved of sharp objects and threatened with being shot if so much as a razor was later found on us, we were led out into the riding school arena where we remained throughout the 19th and the 20th.

During those two days some of us made the acquaintance of a rubber truncheon on the head. However, this was more or less within acceptable bounds for those accustomed to guardians of the peace using such methods to keep order.

Meanwhile, some families were buying their loved ones’ freedom, paying the SS huge sums of money.

At night, we all slept side by side on the ground.

The arena was lit by a huge spotlight set up right next to the entrance.

SS men with automatic weapons were stationed on all four sides.

There were about one thousand eight hundred or so of us.

What really annoyed me the most was the passivity of this group of Poles. All those picked up were already showing signs of crowd psychology, the result being that our whole crowd behaved like a herd of passive sheep.

A simple thought kept nagging me: stir up everyone and get this mass of people moving.

I suggested to my comrade, Sławek Szpakowski (who I know was living in Warsaw up to the Uprising), a joint operation during the night: take over the crowd, attack the sentry posts while I, on my way to the lavatory, would “bump” into the spotlight and smash it.

However, I had a different reason for being there.

This would have been a much less important objective.

While he—thought the idea was total madness….