(ANSA) - TRIESTE, 24 MAG - He fought Nazism in the Auschwitz
camp and the Warsaw Uprising, opposed the Stalinism that was
battering Poland, suffered hardships and torture, and paid with
his life for his yearning for freedom.
Cavalry Captain Witold Pilecki was executed with an in back of
neck gunshot in a Warsaw prison cell on May 25, 1948, 75 years
ago, and his body was buried in the night so that his memory
would also disappear.
Only with the fall of the Berlin Wall did Pilecki's profile
slowly emerge from oblivion. Today he is a national hero. The
captain had been one of the founders of the Polish underground
army. Still, more importantly, he was the only one who
voluntarily got himself locked up in Auschwitz, simulating that
he had fallen in a raid with the secret mission of creating a
resistance network and witnessing to the world what was
happening in the 'factory of death.' His was the first detailed
report on Auschwitz, leaked in November 1940 and arriving via
Stockholm to London in March 1941, which was, however,
considered by the British to be "exaggerated." Instead, it was
all true. Pilecki escaped in April 1943. In 1945 he was in
Italy, in the Marche Region, under the orders of General
Wladyslaw Anders, and returned on a mission to Soviet-occupied
Poland. However, he was identified, arrested, tortured, taken to
trial on false charges, and then executed.
Historian Marco Patricelli first reconstructed his profile in
his book 'The Volunteer (Laterza, Premio Acqui Storia,
bestseller in Poland). On Saturday, the Krakow Philharmonic
Orchestra, conducted by Alexander Humala, performed an excerpt
from Pilecki's Suite for symphony orchestra that the same
historian, this time as a composer, dedicated to the hero who
fought against the totalitarianisms of the 20th century. (ANSA).
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In 1948 Pilecki's execution, he unveiled Auschwitz horrors
The Polish hero was killed on May 25 by the communist regime