Polish historians hope secret mass grave will yield hero of Auschwitz who VOLUNTEERED to enter death camp and chronicle exterminations

It could hardly have been a riskier mission – to infiltrate Auschwitz and chronicle Nazi atrocities.  Witold Pilecki survived nearly three years as an inmate in the death camp, managing to smuggle out word of executions before making a daring escape.

But the Polish resistance hero was crushed by the post-war communist regime tried on trumped-up charges and executed. Six decades on, Poland hopes Pilecki’s remains will be identified among the entangled skeletons and shattered skulls of resistance fighters being excavated from a mass grave on the edge of Warsaw’s Powazki Military Cemetery. The exhumations are part of a movement in the resurgent, democratic nation to officially recognize its war-time heroes and 20th century tragedies.

‘He was unique in the world,’ said Zofia Pilecka-Optulowicz, paying tribute to her father’s 1940 decision to walk straight into a Nazi street roundup with the aim of getting inside the extermination camp. ‘I would like to have a place where I can light a candle for him.’ More than 100 skeletons, mostly of men, have been dug up this summer. On one recent day, forensic workers and archaeologists wearing blue plastic gloves and masks were carefully scraping away at the soil and piecing together bones as if working on a jigsaw puzzle.  The front of one skull had been blown away by bullets; another had apparently been bludgeoned; a skeleton showed evidence of multiple gunshot wounds

Near the pit where the bodies were dumped under cover of night stand the well-tended tombstones of the very judges and prosecutors who sent these World War II heroes to their deaths under orders from Moscow, which was fearful that the Polish patriots might use their seasoned underground skills to turn the nation against its new pro-Soviet rulers.

Held: In this photo taken in 1940, Witold Pilecki is seen as an inmate of the Auschwitz Birkenau death camp

Discovery: Poland now hopes Pilecki’s remains will be identified among the skeletons of resistance fighters currently being excavated from a mass grave on the edge of Warsaw’s Powazki Military Cemetery

‘The perpetrators have not been punished and the bodies of the victims have not been found,’ said Krzysztof Szwagrzyk, a historian in charge of the dig. ‘Those times will be coming back to us until we find the bodies and bury them with due honors. ‘We are doing them justice.’ Pilecki’s son Andrzej and dozens of other relatives of victims have been swabbed in the hope their DNA will be a match for the skeletons. Initial work is being carried out to determine age, sex, height and injuries of the victims.  It will take several months to determine if Pilecki, who was killed by a bullet to the back of his head, is among them. Thousands of resistance fighters were killed across Poland; the remains of up to 400 are believed to have been dumped in the Powazki mass grave.

Pilecki was 38 when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, triggering the start of World War II.

He helped organize a resistance campaign during which many fellow fighters were caught and sent to Auschwitz, which in the early war years served more as a camp for Polish resistance fighters than Jews.

Grim: More than 100 skeletons, mostly of men, have already been dug up this summer. In this photo an archeologist uncovers a skeleton during works at the cemetery

Patience: A forensic worker sorts through bones during work at the cemetery. It will take several months to determine if Pilecki, who was killed by a bullet to the back of his head, is among them.

That inspired him to hatch an audacious plan: He told other resistance commanders that he wanted to become an Auschwitz inmate to check on rumors of atrocities.  Carrying documents bearing the alias Tomasz Serafinski, the Catholic cavalry officer walked into the German SS street roundup in Warsaw in September 1940, and was put on a train transport to Auschwitz, where he was given prisoner number 4859.

He was ‘exceptionally courageous,’ said Jacek Pawlowicz, a historian with Warsaw’s Institute of National Remembrance. Pilecki is the only person known to have volunteered for Auschwitz. His terse dispatches to the outside world were slips of thin paper stitched inside clothes of inmates leaving the camp or left in nearby fields for others to collect.  They included only code names for inmates who were beaten to death, executed by gunfire or gassed. As sketchy as they were, they were the first eyewitness account of the Nazi death machine at Auschwitz.

Pilecki survived hard labor, beatings, cold and typhoid fever thanks to support from a clandestine resistance network that he managed to organize inside the camp. Some of its members had access to food, others to clothes or medicines.

Past: The exhumations are part of a movement in the resurgent, democratic Poland to officially recognize its war-time heroes and 20th century tragedies

Remembrance: Zofia Pilecka-Optulowicz, daughter of Witold Pilecki, attends a ceremony marking the archeological work at the Powazki cemetery

After his escape, Pilecki wrote three detailed reports on the extermination camp.

One describes how his transport was met by yelling SS men and attacking dogs: ‘They told one of us to run to a post away from the road, and immediately sent a machine gun round after him. Killed him. ‘Ten random colleagues were taken out of the group and shot, as they were walking, as “collective responsibility” for the “escape” that the SS-men arranged themselves.’

Difficult: A forensic worker cleans a skull during the excavation

Pilecki’s heroics were for the most part in vain. Even though his accounts of gas chambers made it all the way to Poland’s government-in-exile in London and to other Western capitals, few believed what they were reading. After escaping, Pilecki rejoined Poland’s Home Army resistance force and fought in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the city’s ill-fated revolt against the Nazis.  In 1947, he was arrested by the secret security of the communist regime, imposed on Poland after the war, and falsely accused of planning to assassinate dignitaries.

The Soviet plan after World War II was to subdue the Poles by crushing resistance and erasing any sense of Polish identity or history.  Today, more than two decades into Poland’s democracy, however, enough documentation and funds have been gathered to restore the banned past and try to find and identify the…

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