Ep. 5: Witold Pilecki w/ Dillon Ewing

In today's episode, Marshall graduate student Dillon Ewing discusses the life and heroics of Witold Pilecki, a Polish spy during WWII.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Welcome everyone back to the History Over Coffee podcast brought to you by Marshall University. Joining us today is Marshall graduate student Dylan Ewing. Why don't you introduce yourself and the topic that you'll be discussing today?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Yeah, thanks, Tyler. So, um, like you said, my name is Dylan Ewing. I am a first-year graduate student uh in the history department here at Marshall University. Um, and today I'm going to be talking a little bit about um the Polish spy who um spied on the Nazis in Auschwitz named Witold Poletzki.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

All right, so to kind of jump off in my brief quick research of Poletzki, I saw that he was born in Russia but is referred to a Polish spy. Is there any sort of discrepancy there? And when entering into the war, was it always his goal to be a spy?

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Yes, that's a great question. So him and his family were Polish. They were um Poles for, I think, quite a few generations. Um, in fact, I think uh one of his very distant ancestors had served in one of the in one of Poland's uh like royal houses back um far before this time period. Um but he was born in Russia. You see, at the time of his birth, um his family was living in a little town called Olonetz, which was in Karelia, which was part of the Russian Empire at the time. Um, because remember, Poletsky was born in 1901, which is of course when the Russian Empire was still um around. But not long after his birth, I think it was maybe a few years after he was born, um, his family moved back to uh to main Poland. Uh so yes, he was born in Russia, but he was by all means a Pole.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

So once moving back to Poland, is there any significant stories about his upbringing that tie into his enter into service during the war, or was it just kind of out of necessity of war that he became a spy?

SPEAKER_00 2:07

So I wouldn't say, all right, so his intention uh was not always to become a spy, but I would say his intention was always to become a soldier. Um and as for any specific stories, I can't think of any at the time. Um, not a ton is known about his early life, except that he was always very much um interested in military affairs. Um he studied abroad in um uh Vilno, I believe it was, um, when he was young, and he was studying for basically a military career. He ended up even founding a chapter of the Polish Scouting Association at one point when he was about 16, I believe. I could be wrong, give or take a few years on that. Um, but he was always intending on becoming a soldier, but he didn't necessarily want to become a spy until, well, you know, we'll discuss the full story later, but it wasn't until the Second World War rolled around that he decided to become a spy. Um, but in terms of like significant events in his childhood that shaped who he was, um, the only things that I can think of right now are things that are pretty typical of most Polish people of the time. Um, for one, he was raised to be intensely patriotic. He loved his country a lot. Um, and he was also a very, very devout Catholic Christian, um, which again was pretty typical for most Polish people of the time. Um, but his love of country and also his uh devout religious faith were both things that shaped his outlook on life um that would eventually motivate him to do the things he did later.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Gotcha. And so he was you said not a lot is known about his early life. He was still, he would have still been roughly a teenager during World War I, correct? Correct.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

He um, in fact, once World War I ended in, you know, um 1918, he would have been about to turn 18 at the time. And not long after he turned 18 in 1919, uh, when he was you know finally old enough for military service, um, Poland was caught up in the uh Polish-Soviet conflict, which was, of course, when uh the Soviets were just attempting to kind of take advantage of a weakened Poland after World War I and move in and attempt to take over the Polish territory for themselves, and of course the Poles fought back. Um Poletsky fought in that war, and I believe he reached the rank of corporal while he was uh fighting in the war. So, yeah, as soon as he was old enough, he immediately started his military service.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

So he fought through that war, and then we have World War II quickly coming up, and I'm sure this is where the meat of his story kind of takes off. How does his involvement in World War II start? What happens during it? How does it conclude?

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Well, so it started because, as I mentioned uh a second ago, where he had served in the Polish-Soviet War, he was, of course, a member of the Polish military. Uh, but then obviously, as we all know, uh, once the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and then the Soviets shortly thereafter, Poland essentially ceased to exist as an independent nation. It was more of a satellite state at this point. And it was obviously under the um dual control of the Nazis and the Soviets. Uh, because of this, the uh Polish army could not function nearly to the extent that it would have uh normally. So he was essentially forced to give up as a soldier, but he didn't want to give up, obviously. I mean, uh, many, many Poles were upset about the fact that they had surrendered to the Nazis. Um, so even though he wasn't technically a soldier at this time, um, or if he was still a soldier, his abilities were very limited. Um, he decided, amongst many other patriotic Poles, to join the, I believe it was called the Polish Underground Army, um, which was exactly what it sounds like. It was just um kind of like an espionage group almost. Um, and it was essentially just a bunch of uh former Polish uh soldiers and government officials operating kind of in the shadows, underground, to fight back against both the Nazis and the Soviets, but at the time primarily the Nazis, um, and tried to keep Poland alive, really, and keep Polish military efforts active instead of letting their uh fighting force just die out. Um now, after he joined uh the Polish Underground Army, you know, one of the things that uh he and his uh comrades noticed was that a lot of Polish citizens, especially Polish soldiers, um were going missing around this time. And of course, we now know that the reason they were going missing is because they were being rounded up by the SS or the Gestapo, uh, and they were being sent off to, you know, Auschwitz, because Auschwitz had been founded there in the town of Auschwitzim uh by the Nazis. Initially, I think it was meant to just be a labor camp. Um, and countless Poles were sent there to, you know, work for the Nazis and of course eventually work themselves to death. And that was eventually what motivated him to be a to become a spy. Um now I should clarify something. Um, I don't say this to downplay his bravery, but a lot of people, you know, this story is not that popular, but when I see people talking about this story, sometimes they say, oh yeah, he instantly stepped up and volunteered himself to go into Auschwitz as a spy, to spy on the Nazis. That's partially true. Um, what happened was there was a meeting amongst the Polish Underground Army, and they decided collectively that someone needed to go into the camp as a spy. And actually, there was a higher-up who was not a huge fan of Poletsky. He didn't like him that much. And in kind of a way of getting back at him or and just being overall very petty, he actually suggested Poletsky for the mission and said, Hey, why don't we ask Peletsky to do that? Um, but Poletsky, being the brave guy that he was, still agreed to the mission, even if it wasn't necessarily his idea. But regardless of, you know, uh all those details, he that was what made him decide to become a spy once a bunch of his countrymen and his fellow soldiers started going missing and they realized that, you know, there was this camp that the Germans had built where people were going and never really coming back, they needed someone to go in and figure out what was happening, and Poletzki was the guy who was willing to undertake that mission.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

Being involved with the Polish Underground Army, did his if you know, did his past military service and rank have any kind of influence on his role in the army? What kind of role did he serve in the Underground Army before entering into the camp?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Oh, it it absolutely helped him. Um I don't know specifically what type of work they were doing before he entered the camp. I think a lot of it was just general reconnaissance, trying to figure out anything they could about the occupying forces, um, maybe trying to get resources to struggling uh people within the ghettos. Because that's something else to keep in mind here is that this Polish Underground Army was stationed in Warsaw, which obviously there was a notorious ghetto located there in Warsaw where the people were suffering. Um, so he would have, of course, been helping uh the people around there. But in terms of his past military experience, um, even after the Polish-Soviet War, he ended up serving in the cavalry uh and he eventually reached the rank of second lieutenant. And if I remember correctly, he was almost instantly taken in as an officer uh in the Polish Underground Army because he had reached a fairly high rank when he was uh serving with the cavalry. Um and that did make him one of the more trusted people uh within uh within the Underground Army. He was always at uh, or not always, but he was at most of their big meetings. He had a pretty big say in some of the decisions they made as well. He was definitely one of the higher-ups uh for them. And yes, his past experience definitely um contributed to that.

SPEAKER_01 10:05

Having this experience when entering into the camp, were the Nazis aware of who he was, or were they just kind of indifferent to all of that?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Uh no, so as far as the Nazis knew, he was just a random Polish citizen. Um, see, what he had done is uh he decided that one day he was going to walk into an SS roundup because you know what would happen is the SS would just randomly, indiscriminately round up a bunch of people that were out in public and send them off to the camps to work there. And he purposefully walked into one of them, but um he gave his name as Tomaj Senofinsky. So he adopted a completely different name, an alias. Um, and that alias was, of course, of someone who was not a soldier. Um, I don't really remember, or I don't even know if there's any detail out there about like um if he used actual identification or papers to prove this. Um, because there was a real person in Poland at the time named, or in Warsaw at the time, named Tomasz Sadofinsky. Um, and funnily enough, uh Tomaj and uh Poletzky would would meet uh about two years after the war. Um uh but either way, he was just using this as basically just a random alias. He didn't um intend on fully adopting this man's identity, he just told them, yeah, that's my name, and they arrested him and sent him off. They had no clue that he was a soldier or an officer for that matter.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Gotcha. So once he is put into the camp, how did he relay information out of the camp? Or was it just he was gonna go there and the hope was that that camp would be liberated and he would have all the information?

SPEAKER_00 11:52

No, so he actually had a pretty uh pretty, if I'm if I can say a pretty decent idea uh before he went into the camp. You see, he had he knew that many of the people who had gone into Auschwitz were past members of the Polish army or current members of the Polish resistance, and his plan was to just link up with them and then they would figure out a plan from there. Um, sadly enough, uh, a lot of the people that he met up with who were parts of the resistance were kind of um apathetic when he got there because they had just been so broken by the camp that they had kind of stopped caring. Um, but he still managed to find people who were willing to help.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Um and he recruited just to interrupt, no, you're good, really quick. What year did he go into Auschwitz?

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Um, I believe it was, I have it in my notes here. Yes, so it was 1940. He was arrested on September 19th, 1940, and he arrived there. I think the the trip there took about one full day and or two full days. He arrived there like late September 21st, and the full process of getting him interred into the camp took until the early early morning of September 22nd. Uh so September 22nd, 1940 is when he was officially imprisoned in the camp. Um, but anyways, uh he was able to find uh plenty of people in the resistance who were willing to help out. And essentially what he did to get information out was because he wouldn't just recruit um members of the resistance or members of the army, he was able to uh recruit just a few very patriotic uh citizens, civilians, who were willing to help him out. And a lot of these people, they would be sent out of the camp for either um, you know, maybe overcrowding or something like that, or um their families would buy them out. Um and once he found out that one of the members of the resistance would be sent out, he would uh go to them like late at night and he would recite his reports to them, and they would recite them back over and over until he knew that they had the report memorized. And because obviously he couldn't write it down and give it to them because they'd be searched, and then obviously it would be very bad. So they had to do it all orally, all purely off of memorization. And uh once he was confident that the person had his report memorized, once that person got back to Warsaw, they would uh you know recite it to the um to the underground army, to the resistance, and then the resistance would therefore transmit it back to the uh government in exile that existed in London.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

So he was relaying information through other people who were getting out. Did and I don't know if this information is accessible if we if there's any writings from him, but do we know if he had a hope that he would one day get out, or did he expect to be there until liberation or death?

SPEAKER_00 14:48

From everything I've seen, he actually fully expected to be there until either the camp was liberated or he was killed. Um there were actually, because there are some books out there on him that I've read, and you can also read his actual report that he wrote on the camp, um, like his whole comprehensive report that he wrote um after the war. Um, and I I feel like I remember reading a few times in that report that there were moments where he actually said he was worried that he was going to get sent out of the camp because he got so dedicated to building the resistance there, and he was so dedicated to eventually one day, hopefully, liberating the camp. Um, and there were times where he would, in his reports that he sent to Warsaw and therefore to London, because again, the uh the secret army in Warsaw was able to maintain contact with the uh government over in London, and they were able to maintain contact with the Allies. Um and in these reports, he repeatedly begged uh for any forces, whether they be Polish or other members of the Allies, to attack the camp, you know, drop weapons on it for an armed revolt. And he even at one point urged them to bomb the camp. He wanted them to just bomb the place, even if it killed the prisoners, uh, because he viewed it as almost like a mercy killing, and just knowing that that would be, in his eyes, a necessary sacrifice to make to take out the Nazis. Now, granted, he only started making uh those very desperate requests after he'd been in there for quite a while, and he started to realize things were a little more dire than he first thought. Um, but regardless, he was willing to be there until until he died or until someone came to rescue them.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

And was it common for prisoners and Auschwitz to kind of be there from the beginning until liberation or was it because obviously a lot of people did die.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

But his story seems interesting because he made it out.

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Yeah, so I don't know exactly of any specific instances of someone being in the camp from when it first started to when it was liberated. I'm sure there may have been one or two who were there, but I I would be willing to bet that it was far from common because the death rates in Auschwitz, as we know, were um quite quite quite high. And uh very few people who went in usually came out unless they were to escape or if they got bought out.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Um but yeah, I think describe any um reason that he thinks he may have been spared all that time that he was in there, or was it just him kind of being stealthy?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Um well, it I think I'd say it was a mix of the two because he was pretty good at espionage. He was good at remaining um stealthy, and even in the camp, he managed to keep his identity um a secret. Uh once he got to the camp and they took his mugshot, um he actually purposefully kind of uh pressed his face back into his neck to make himself look heavier than he actually was, so that while he was walking around the camp, the guards wouldn't be able to quickly identify him based off his mugshot. Um so he was very good at being stealthy, but also um where he spent so much time as a soldier um and he had such an active lifestyle, he was in incredibly good shape. Um, and I think that was one of the things that saved him. He even mentioned um a few times in his report report that in his words, a lifetime of sports had saved him because he got selected for a lot of the physical jobs around the camp, um, like construction, carpentry, even electrical work sometimes, um, and where he was in such good shape that kept him, you know, fit for these jobs. Um, so I would say that was the biggest thing that kept him alive for so long was his physical condition, but his his stealthiness also played a part in that as well.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

So through talking to you, it's clear that he survived Auschwitz. What did his life look like after making it out of the camp?

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Uh well, after he made it out of Auschwitz, I'm I'm gonna be honest, it's it's a pretty tragic, uh, tragic tale ultimately. Um, because after he got out of Auschwitz, and you know, I mentioned earlier that he sent reports to Warsaw and that some of these reports even made it to London and were among the first reports about Auschwitz to reach the Allies. Um, and a lot of people, when they hear that, they wonder, well, why didn't the Allies do anything about it? Why wasn't it until much later uh that they live when they liberated Auschwitz and realized the reality of it? Well, it's because so many people at this time just didn't want to believe him, and they didn't believe him. Um when he got back to Warsaw and he told his um his comrades about it, even the higher-ups, even the officers within the uh resistance, um they didn't believe him when he told them how bad the camp was. Uh they thought that it was just outlandish, they thought there was no way any human beings could be that brutal and that um just awful, and they didn't believe him, and they just kind of wrote his story off as nonsense. Um but regardless of whether or not they believed him, um, he still committed himself to serving the resistance. Um and as uh you know most people know, in 1944, I believe it was, um, there was the Warsaw Uprising where a bunch of the civilians and the soldiers who were there in the city rose up against the Nazis. Uh well, he fought in that. He fought as a soldier in that. Um, and you know, even if, again, even if his government had kind of betrayed him and they weren't really believing what he said about the camp, that didn't stop him from continuing to serve his country. Um, and that continued even after the war. Um, because of course, after the Nazis were defeated, um, Poland came under the control of the Soviets, which, you know, is not really much better at all. Um, and the Soviets were still obviously very um oppressive of the Polish people, and they did not want Poland to exist as an independent nation. Um, so he started spying against the Soviets at this point. Um, uh he did this primarily in Warsaw, I believe. And he did that for about two years, I think. Um and then in, I believe, 1947, unfortunately, he was um arrested by Soviet forces. I think he had been ratted out, I can't remember by who, but either way, the Soviets found out who he was and that he was spying. He was arrested and he was put on trial. It was essentially just a kangaroo court. Um, it obviously wasn't fair. And he was accused of a bunch of things, some of which, well, most of which um he had not committed. And the only things that he had committed were things like illegal border crossing, which as an officer in the Polish army he had permission to do, but it didn't matter because the Soviets still found him guilty, and ultimately he was executed in 1948, even if he was totally innocent of the stuff he'd been accused of. Um and the worst part of all this is that his story was covered up for like years and years. It wasn't until Poland gained independence from the USSR, which I think was only it was around the same time that the USSR collapsed. It wasn't until that happened and the confiscated files that the Soviets had were released that people found out the truth about his story and found out that he was a hero. And of course, that was also when he was exonerated. So yeah, his story is incredibly sad because he spent a good portion of his life. He was actually in Auschwitz for two years and seven months. All of that time he was trying to help his countrymen, trying to fight for the greater good. And then when he finally got out, when he finally escaped the camp, no one believed him, and he was ultimately executed by the Soviets for things that he was pretty much innocent of. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:48

The good thing is we have you here today kind of retelling his story. Um, how did you particularly become interested in Poletsky? And is is his story one that is common in history, or do you kind of have to go looking for it?

SPEAKER_00 23:06

So you definitely have to go looking for it. Um, it's not like by any means one of the most popular World War II stories. It I would say it's fairly niche, it's not super niche. You'll talk to some people who have who have heard about it, or people who have done some research into like the Polish resistance or the Auschwitz resistance. Um, they'll have heard of him. But I rarely meet people who actually know who he is. So I would definitely say that you have to go looking for his story. But um, you asked how I found out about it, and this is probably one of the nerdiest things about me. I mean, I'm sitting here talking about history, but this is even nerdier. But uh for pretty much my whole, well, not my whole life, but since I was a teenager, I was always a big metal head. I loved uh, you know, rock music, metal music. And uh once I came here to Marshall and started studying, um, studying history, uh a friend of mine uh named Maddie actually introduced me to a band you might have heard of. They're called Sabaton. And they are a heavy metal band who make songs all about history and historical figures. And they have a song called Inmate4859, uh, which is about Poletsky, uh, because that was his number that he was assigned when he arrived at Auschwitz, 4859. Um, and I listened to that song and I thought it was really cool. And I was like, man, this guy sounds really interesting. So I did a little more research on it, and uh like that story just kind of instantly struck a chord with me. I was like, this is this is insane. Like, how are we not talking about this? Like, why do more people not know about this? Um, because it's one of those stories where you know, you just you read about this guy, and you're like the bravery that he had and the resilience he had to go through what he went through and keep on fighting, it's just insane. And, you know, one of the most, I think, popular things that people like to talk about when they're talking about history, especially topics like war, is they like to talk about the heroes of the wars, like you know, the people who did good things during that war, the people who were brave, the people who, in a time of such horrible violence and horrible darkness, the people who decided to rise up and do what was right. And yet I didn't hear anything about this guy um until I listened to this song. And I never I almost never heard people talking about him. And I was like, he's like, you know, one of the most, one of the biggest definitions of a hero that you can get when it comes to modern history. Um, and that just made me want to research him more, to learn more about him so I could tell uh tell more people about him and make him, you know, make his story more well known. Because I think it's a shame that his story is forgotten by even you know historians today. Um because again, what he did was incredible. I mean, so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

I agree completely. Just listening to you talk about him, I can tell that it's a very heroic story. Oh on a much lighter note, it's just to kind of wrap things up. If you could all expenses paid, go anywhere in the world to go to like all the monuments and historical sites and archives and really dive deep into the history of city, country, wherever you choose to go, where would you choose to go?

SPEAKER_00 26:21

So you're saying I have to pick one place like city or country, or can it be a few? Uh I'll give you a few. Okay, that oh, even that's hard because I okay. I would have to say if it's all expenses paid, um I would have to say England, France, and Germany. Because I'm obviously a huge World War II nerd. Um, and there are plenty of sites to see uh pertaining to that in those countries, but I'm also a big nerd for things like World War I. And there's places like the Somme, uh, you know, and uh Verdun. I'd love to see all of that. And of course, you also over in England, there are all kinds of um castles and things related to medieval history that I've also recently been studying a lot. Um, and I would just love to see a bunch of that stuff. I've been I've actually been to um France and Germany once in the past. I actually went on a vacation there with my uh family uh last summer, and I absolutely loved it, but uh we didn't have enough time to see everything we wanted to see. And I'd love to go back and see more of the sites that we weren't able to visit. Um, so yeah, I would say that those are the three countries that I'd like to go to if if all expenses were paid, of course.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Well, I hope one day you do get back there. Um thank you for joining us here today. Absolutely. And thank you. Yep, thank you, all of our listeners, for tuning in, and we will see you next week.