The son of Witold Pilecki – a Polish underground officer who deliberately had himself imprisoned at Auschwitz to organise resistance and gather intelligence in the camp – has launched a bid to obtain 26 million zloty (€5.5 million) in compensation for his father’s postwar death at the hands of the communist authorities.
Pilecki – who, after escaping Auschwitz in 1943, fought in the Warsaw Uprising the following year – is regarded as one of Poland’s greatest wartime heroes. After the war, like many members of the underground, he shifted from resisting Nazi-German occupation to opposing the new Soviet-imposed communist regime.
After being arrested in 1947, Pilecki was imprisoned, tortured and then subjected to a show trial (pictured above), at which he was sentenced to death. His execution was carried out in 1948, when Pilecki was aged 47.
A 1940 mugshot of Pilecki after he deliberately had himself imprisoned at Auschwitz.
In an interview this week with Super Express, one of Pilecki’s children, Andrzej, who is aged 90, revealed that he has submitted an application for compensation from the Polish state for the treatment of his father.
The newspaper reports that Andrzej is seeking just over 26.1 million zloty for the harm suffered by his father due to his imprisonment and execution.
Warsaw district court and the regional prosecutor’s office confirmed that the claim has been submitted. A first hearing before the court will reportedly take place soon.
The @WorldJewishCong recounts the story of Witold Pilecki, the Polish underground officer who deliberately had himself imprisoned at Auschwitz to gather intel on the camp and organise resistance within it, then after the war was executed by the communists pic.twitter.com/o14zkfaT43
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 13, 2019
Last year, a former anti-communist dissident, Andrzej Gwiazda, was awarded 425,000 zloty from the state as compensation for being interned by the communist authorities during martial law in the 1980s.
In 2020, the wife and children of another opposition activist, Piotr Bartoszcze, who was killed by the communist security services in 1984, were granted two million zloty compensation.
However, in the same year, a woman who was born and spent the first two years of her life in the communist-era prison where her parents – members of the resistance – were imprisoned saw her bid for 15 million zloty in compensation rejected.
A woman who spent her first years of life in a communist prison, where her mother died giving birth to her, has a claim for 15m zloty compensation rejected.
Her parents were two of the "cursed soldiers" who resisted the introduction of communism in Poland https://t.co/nEwCMNgH8n
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 29, 2020
Poland’s Institute for National Remember (IPN), a state historical body, notes that, although Pilecki’s 1948 sentence was officially overturned in 1990 after the fall of communism, none of the judges involved in the ruling were ever held legally responsible.
Pilecki’s own history was suppressed for decades under communism, but has been revived in recent decades, along with those of many other so-called “cursed soldiers” (żolnierze wyklęci) who resisted the introduction of communism after the war.
Pilecki was recently the subject of an English-language biography, The Volunteer, by British journalist Jack Fairweather. The book won the Costa Book of the Year award in 2020 and, soon after, a British production house bought screen rights to turn it into a film.
A British production house has bought the screen rights to the biography of Witold Pilecki, the Polish underground officer who deliberately had himself imprisoned at Auschwitz to organise resistance and gather intelligence https://t.co/SWHasOH6b8
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) February 7, 2020
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
