The Volunteer

As the sun rose on the morning of September 5, 1939, Witold Pilecki looked around in horror. The scene was nightmarish: the bodies of horses and men – his men – lay scattered around him, broken by bullets and bombs. He’d mustered these men from his home district, trained them all summer, and then led them to the frontlines to face the invading Germans. They’d wanted to defend Polish sovereignty. But a Nazi air raid had reduced them to this: a group of the dead and the dying. 

Witold was a Polish patriot. Born into the gentry, he was proud of Poland’s historical status as a beacon of culture – a pluralistic, tolerant society. But his patriotism was more than intellectual: he had plenty to lose personally as well. He chose to fight because, if the Nazis invaded, they’d commandeer his home and the estate he’d inherited. His family, including his wife and two young children, would be in danger.

He’d hoped to help defeat the Nazis in combat. But, on that grim September morning, that hope was dashed. His men never stood a chance, just as Polish forces never stood a chance: the Nazi war machine had twice the number of soldiers and nearly ten times the number of fighter planes. The frontline troops, like Witold’s unit, were crushed almost immediately. In a few days, the Nazis had also taken Poland’s capital, Warsaw. The war was over. 

But Witold refused to surrender. He’d sworn an oath to defend Polish sovereignty, and to that he would hold.

After the air raid, he rallied a few other survivors and decamped to the woods, to hector the Nazis as they set up their checkpoints and observation posts throughout the Polish countryside. But Witold soon realized that his talents would be of more use in Warsaw, organizing an underground resistance.

When he arrived in the capital, he saw a brutal racial order being imposed. The Nazis were dividing people into ethnic Poles and Jewish people. Jewish families were evicted from their homes and beaten as they fled. As the Germans occupied the city, they lorded their invented status as the “master race” over everyone else. Ethnic Poles were to be laborers. Jewish people were on the bottom rung of the Nazi racial order.

Witold was disgusted by the Nazis’ racialized vision for his country. He wasn’t the only one. Signs of resistance around Warsaw encouraged him, like a huge poster in the city center depicting a cartoon version of Hitler. His purpose now, he realized, was to fan the spark of resistance into a flame.