Auschwitz was created by Nazi Germany
in the spring of 1940 in the annexed Polish territories
as a tool of terror against the Polish population. In this period,
no one really understands
what Auschwitz was. Auschwitz didn't yet have this kind
of meaning when people were talking in the street.
There are people transported to Auschwitz, they somehow disappear.
We we hear nothing from them. From the perspective
of the resistance, it was a place that they had to look into.
What is this?
The resistance decided that the infiltration of this camp would be of their interest.
When Witold Pilecki arrived at the camp,
he enters into the world of absolute terror and the SS
made sure that everything here in Auschwitz has this task
of breaking people or persuasions.
In the very early period, the prisoners would sleep on strong
and only from fall of 1941, one such three level bunk beds,
as you can see here, where placed in the rooms
of Auschwitz One, and usually two prisoners would take one floor.
So of course, it was very, very overcrowded.
And we are now in block 3A,
the upper floor of this building, and in one of these rooms,
Witold Pilecki slept as a prisoner of Auschwitz.
When people look at the story of prisoners in Auschwitz,
the first impression would be that these people always supported each other
and tried to help each other,
and that this is just one community that will always stand behind one another.
And actually, because of the conditions, because of the starvation,
because of the violence, because of fear, because of terror,
people simply make a decision to survive.
And sometimes it means that your decision will harm someone else.
This is the diabolic world of the camp.
When we talk about Auschwitz, how should we understand resistance?
Is it just a kind of a military planning and escapes and revolts,
or is actually trying to survive
and help other people in this reality already some kind of a resistance?
The organisation that Pilecki built in Auschwitz is based on a system of fives.
So he tried to have people in different work units,
in different work groups to be able to gather intelligence information
about what is happening in Auschwitz.
He could tell from his own perspective how the living conditions look like,
how the camp looked like.
But he didn't have access, for example, to numbers of prisoners.
He had prisoners who, for example, worked in some of the SS offices and
who had access to documents, to files, or people who worked in a hospital.
He is simply gathering information from the network that he's creating,.
Most of the escapes from Auschwitz happened from the outside,
escaping through the barbed wire fence, it was basically impossible.
There are two lines of barbed wire,
so there is something that looks like a like a curb.
These are in fact cement blocks that are built into the ground
to to a certain depth so that people wouldn't be able to,
for example, create some kind of a tunnel under.
He manages to be signed off from his regular working unit and then,
thanks to the help of the organization, he and two other prisoners
he plans to escape with can be assigned to the bakery unit outside.
They also made sure that they will be in the night shift
and they go to the bakery and they kill the alarm,
they cut the wires and then at night, when there is an opportunity,
three of them try to simply open this massive metal door
and then they simply escape.
My great grandma, for example, she she remembered the very lively
that one day she was bringing the package for him
to the prison and they told her: "Pilecki, no, he's not here".
For like 40 years
she was hoping that maybe they just brought him somewhere
to some mines in Siberia, or somewhere,
she was hoping that he's coming back one day.
So actually,
in 1990, I think was the year she finally got the official documents saying
that yes, he was shot dead. And for so many years,
she couldn't tell anyone, it was forbidden to even mention
with Witold Pilecki in the Communist times, he was to be forgotten.
Something that we take from the legacy of Pilecki
is that he always refers
to the organisation, that you wouldn't be able to do anything
without the cooperation of many different people,
sometimes coming from many different political backgrounds and cultures.
And all these people finally could understand, here
in this extreme world created by Nazi Germans,
that it is important to cooperate.