(ANSA) - VICOLI (PESCARA) - A simple ceremony and a palpable emotion among Polish representatives at the opening of the new public garden at Vicoli, the smallest village in the province of Pescara, which was named after the captain Witold Pilecki (1901-1948), the 'Auschwitz volunteer'.

The village has thus remembered, for the first time outside Poland, the heroism of a man who chose to be deported to Nazi concentration camp in order to witness what was happening behind the barbed wire and create an organized movement of resistance.

Pilecki was the first man to reveal the horror of Auschwitz, through a detailed report that he secretly delivered to Poland's government-in-exile in London, via Stockholm, in March 1941, but that story was considered to be "exaggerated". The municipality of Vicoli explained this tribute to Pilecki as follows: "There are men who know how to find the path of honor and justice in the darkness of barbarism. Witold Pilecki was a beacon of freedom that the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century tried to put out, aiming to keep Europe in the darkness of dictatorship. Pilecki has represented and represents all the values of mankind on which today's free and democratic Europe was founded".

Poland's ambassador to Rome, Tomasz Orlowski, appreciated that the commemorative plaque, engraved on a piece of Majella's stone by renowned stonemasons from Abruzzo (given by the National Union of the Pro Loco), shows a 'Kotwica ', that is a logo in the shape of an anchor, which was the symbol of the Polish people's resistanceagainst Nazi and Soviet invaders. The communist regime forbade the use of this symbol until the fall of the Berlin Wall. Therefore, it appears for the first time on a monument in Europe.(ANSA).