Witold Pilecki was born in the Russian Empire on May 13, 1901 in the town of Olonets in Karelia. In fact, he came from the descendants of an aristocratic family (szlachta) from the Grodno region. Grandfather Józef Pilecki h. Leliwa was a Polish shepherd and a special Polish nationalist. He had also been a supporter of the separatist January Uprising in 1863–64. After the uprising was brutally defeated by Russian forces, Józef Pilecki's title was revoked as in the Polish armies supporting the rebellion; His property and other properties near Lida were confiscated by the Russian government. He was also sentenced to a 7-year exile in Siberia. After his release, he and his family were forced to flee the remote areas of Karelya by the Tsarist authorities. For the next thirty years, the family no longer had the right to live outside this province and its members depended on the law only to be employed by the Russian state. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get the original essay Witold's father, Julian Pilecki, trained as a forester in St. Petersburg and started as a senior inspector at the National Council of the Karelian forests and joined the Russian civil service. Eventually he settled in the town of Olonets and married Ludwika Pilecki née Osiecimba. Witold Pilecki became the fourth of the couple's five children. In 1910, Ludwika and the boys left Kareia and settled in the northwest krai. The family members moved to Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania), where Pilecki completed his primary education and became a member of the secret scout organization ZHP after joining it through his father. During the First World War, Wilno was occupied by the German army on September 5, 1915 and attached to the German administration of Ober Ost. Pilecki and his Mogilev family escaped from the Eastern Front to Belarus. In 1916, Pilecki went to Oryol, entered the gym and created a local chapter of the ZHP group. In 1918, after the emergence of the Russian Revolution and the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, Pilecki returned to Wilno (now part of the newly independent Second Polish Republic) and joined the ZHP scout section of the Lithuanian and Belarusian autonomous region. The Defense Militia is a paramilitary formation aligned with the White Movement under the leadership of General Wladyslaw Wejtko. The militia disarmed the withdrawn German troops and set about protecting the city from an attack that might soon be carried out by the Soviet Red Army. But Wilno fell to Bolshevik forces on January 5, 1919, and Pilecki and the Union resorted to partisan warfare behind Soviet laws. He and his comrades were then lured to Bialystok, where Pilecki was a szeregowy (special) member of the newly created Polish Volunteer Army. He participated in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921, under the auspices of Captain Jerzy Dabrowski. He fought in the Battle of kyiv (1920) and in a cavalry unit defending the city of Grodno. On August 5, 1920, Pilecki joined the 211th Uhlan Regiment and fought in the Great Warsaw War and in the Rudniki Forest (Puszcza Rudnicka). Pilecki then participated in the liberation of Wilno and briefly joined the Zeligowski uprising of October 1920 in the Polish–Lithuanian War. He was twice awarded the Krzyz Walecznych Prize (Cross of Valor) for bravery. After the Polish-Soviet War ended in March 1921, Pilecki was transferred to the army reserves. He is promoted to the rank of corporal. The same year, he continued his secondary studies (matura). In 1922, Pilecki surrenderedbriefly at the University of Poznan and studied agriculture. She briefly returned to Wilno and entered the Faculty of Fine Arts at Stefan Batory University. Pilecki was forced to stop working both in the financial field in 1924 due to his father's deteriorating health. He remained active in the army as a member of the military reserve and worked as a military teacher in Nowe Swiecice. Pilecki later received officer training at the Subarry Reserve Officer Training School in Grudziadz. After graduating, Pilecki was commissioned into the 26th Lancer Regiment by rank of Chorazy (crusader) in July 1925. Pilecki would be promoted to Podporucznik (second lieutenant) the following year. In September 1926, Pilecki became the owner of Sukurcze, his family's ancestral estate in the Lida district of Nowogródek Voivodeship. Pilecki rebuilt and modernized the property destroyed during the First World War. On April 7, 1931, he married local schoolteacher Maria Pilecka née Ostrowska (1906 – February 6, 2002). Two children were born in Wilno: Andrzej (January 16, 1932) and Zofia (March 14, 1933). Pilecki and his family would then stay in Sukucze. Pilecki established a reputation as a community leader, well-known social worker and amateur painter. He was also a strong advocate of rural development, establishing an agricultural cooperative running a local milk processing plant and local fire brigade. In 1932, Pilecki founded a cavalry training school in Lida. Shortly after, he was appointed commander of the newly created 1st Lidsky Fleet, until 1937, when this union was integrated into the 19th Polish Infantry Division. In 1938, Pilecki received the Silver Cross of Merit for his community activism and social work. Shortly before the start of World War II, Pilecki was commander of a cavalry unit. He was then appointed to the 19th Infantry Division under General Józef Kwaciszewski. The unit participated in fierce combat against the advancing Germans in the Polish occupation. Pilecki's platoon was almost completely destroyed on September 10 after the clash with Kempf's Panzer Division. After the Polish government officially surrendered to Nazi Germany on September 27, 1939, Pilecki and many other men continued to fight in a partisan manner. The division was disbanded on October 17 and parts surrendered to their enemies. Pilecki began hiding in Warsaw with the commander, Major Wlodarkiewicz. On November 9, 1939, two men founded the Polish Secret Army (Tajna Armia Polska, TAP), one of Poland's first underground organizations. Pilecki expanded to include Siedlce, Radom, Lublin and other central Polish centers, not just Warsaw, becoming the organizational commander of the TAP. In 1940, Pilecki presented his plan to enter the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oswiecim, gather intelligence from the camp from inside, and organize resistance while in detention. Until then, very little was known about how the Germans ran the camp, and it was believed that it was a normal prison camp and not an extermination camp. The superiors approved the plan and gave him a fake ID in the name “Tomasz Serafinski”. On September 19, 1940, during a tour of the streets of Warsaw (âApanka), he deliberately went out and was captured by the Germans, along with 2,000 civilians (including Wladyslaw Bartoszewski). Pilecki was sent to Auschwitz and assigned the inmate number 4859. While in prison, Pilecki was promoted to the rank of Porucznik (first lieutenant) by the House Army. While working in Auschwitz, in various kommandos and surviving pneumonia, Pilecki organized the underground. Organizationsmilitary (ZOW). ZOW provided valuable information about the camp to the Polish underworld. Since October 1940, ZOW reported to Warsaw and in March 1941, Pilecki's reports were transmitted to the British government in London through the Polish resistance. In 1942, Pilecki's resistance movement published details of the conditions of the inmates and the number of arrivals and deaths in the camp and used a radio transmitter made by the camp's prisoners. The secret radio station, built from seven-and-a-half-year-old fugitive fragments, was broadcasting until the fall of 1942, when it was dismantled by Pilecki's men, fearing that the Germans would discover it because of " a big mouth from our friend." These reports were a primary source of information on Auschwitz for the Western Allies. When Pilecki was assigned to a night shift at a camp bakery outside the fence, he and two comrades overpowered a guard, cut the telephone line and fled on the night of April 26–27, 1943, taking with them them documents stolen from the Germans. When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944, Pilecki volunteered to serve in Kedyw's Chrobry II battalion. At first, Pilecki served as a joint soldier in the north inner city. After many officers were killed in the fierce battle that broke out at the start of the uprising, Pilecki announced his true identity and accepted command of the 1st "Warszawianka". Company in Sródmiescie in the city center of Warsaw. Pilecki fought under the command of the guerrilla named “Captain Roman”. Their forces remained in a fortified area, one of the most distant partisan redoubts, called the "Great Bastion of Warsaw". Pilecki and his men steadily took control of a strategically placed building overlooking the important west-east Jerusalem Boulevard, causing serious losses to German supply lines and significant logistical challenges. The fortress was held for two weeks under constant attacks from German infantry and armor. After the uprising surrendered, Pilecki hid a cache of weapons in a private apartment and surrendered to the Wehrmacht on October 5, 1944. He was imprisoned in Stalag VIII-B, a German prisoner of war camp near Lamsdorf, Silesia . He was then transferred to Oflag VII-A in Murnau, Bavaria, where he was liberated by troops of the US 12th Armored Division on April 28, 1945. After the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, Pilecki was sent in Britain as an officer. Polish armed forces in the west. In July 1945, Ancona was reassigned to the military intelligence section of the Polish II Corps under General Wladyslaw Anders in Italy. While assigned, Pilecki began writing a monograph about his experiences at Auschwitz. In October 1945, when relations between the extreme Polish government and the Soviet-backed regime of Boleslaw Bierut broke down, Pilecki received the order from General Anders and the chief intelligence lieutenant. Colonel Stanislaw Kijak will return to Poland and report on the prevailing military and political situation under Soviet occupation. By mid-1946, Pilecki's network successfully linked up with Polish anti-Soviet partisans and established a clandestine mail system to send information from Warsaw to the Polish II Corps center in Italy. However, the greatest success was the recruitment of Captain Wawel Alchimowicz, an official of the Polish Ministry of Public Security (MBP), the communist secret police. In April 1947, he began collecting evidence of Soviet atrocities committed in Poland during 6.