Polish Independence Day in Auschwitz

11th November 1941: The SS murder 151 Polish prisoners in Auschwitz on the day they commence executions at the 'Death Wall'

Witold Pilecki was an officer in the Polish Cavalry before the war.

Witold Pilecki was a founding member of the Polish Resistance movement - the Tajna Armia Polska (TAP; Secret Polish Army) - in Nazi-occupied Poland. Then in 1940 he volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz in order to report on conditions inside the camp and to organise a clandestine resistance movement within. He allowed himself to be captured in a roundup while carrying a false identity.

Witold Pilecki as KL-Auschwitz prisoner, KL Number 4859, 1940

In this exceptionally dangerous role, he was remarkably successful, smuggling out a number of reports that were the principal intelligence for the Polish government in exile on the Auschwitz regime and the growing Holocaust.

In November 1941 Pilecki¹ was working in part of the Carpenters workshop in Auschwitz:

Tadeusz Lech, imprisoned alongside Pilecki as a Polish political prisoner, murdered 11th November 1941.

A great fellow, always cheerful – 42 [Tadeusz Lech] sat on one side of me, on the other – a good colleague – 45 [Stanisław Gutkiewicz].

In the morning of November 11, 1941, colleague 42 approached me, and said: ‘I had a weird dream, I feel that they will blow me away today. Maybe it is a trifle, and yet, if nothing else, it makes me happy that I’ll die on November 11.’