Christmas Under German Occupation – Witold Pilecki: Part 2

Continuing our series of blog posts about Christmas under German occupation—

This is the second part of Pilecki’s descriptions of Christmas at Auschwitz. In September 1940, Polish Army officer Witold Pilecki walked into a German street round-up in Warsaw…and became Auschwitz Prisoner No. 4859.

Pilecki had volunteered for a potentially suicidal secret undercover mission for the Polish Underground—to get himself arrested by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz as a prisoner. His mission: smuggle out intelligence about this new German concentration camp, and build a resistance organization among prisoners with the ultimate goal of liberating the camp.

Through his changing descriptions, we can see how Auschwitz was evolving. Click here for the first Christmas, 1940.

Excerpts from The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery:

 

Christmas 1941

p. 83:
The winter was quite severe. To be sure, we had been issued coats even before Christmas, but they were “ersatz” without linings and gave little protection from the frost.

p. 150:
My second Christmas in Auschwitz came, together with another parcel from home—of clothes (there were no food parcels at that time).

On Block 25, where the block supervisor 80 [Alfred Włodarczyk] turned out to be sympathetic to our work, in room 7 where the supervisor was 59 [Henryk Bartosiewicz] we put up a Christmas tree with a Polish eagle hanging secretly on it.

The room was decorated really tastefully by 44 [Wincenty Gawron] and 45 [Stanisław Gutkiewicz], with a bit of help from me.

On Christmas Eve some of the representatives of our political cell said a few words.

Could Dubois [Stanisław Dubois, a leader in the left-wing Polish Socialist Party] have listened with pleasure in the outside world to Rybarski [Professor Roman Rybarski, a leader in the right-wing National Party] and then have warmly shaken his hand and vice versa?

How moving such a picture of agreement would have been in Poland, and how impossible.

And yet here in our room in Auschwitz both of them willingly spoke.

What a metamorphosis!

 

 

Continued in Christmas Under German Occupation—Witold Pilecki: Part 3….