Pilecki’s WWII Auschwitz report gets Mandarin translation
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
21.01.2014 13:54
The Auschwitz Report by Captain Witold Pilecki, an inmate and escapee of the Nazi German death camp, has been translated into Mandarin and is published this week by the Acropolis Publishers in Taiwan.
Witold Pilecki Auscwitz photos 1942: photo - IPN
Patience Huang of Acropolis Publishers is quoted on the website of the state-backed National Remembrance Institute (IPN) as saying of the work, published under the title The Auschwitz Volunteer – Beyond Bravery: “Pilecki’s report is an extraordinary document. For me, it is not the work of the victim of war but of a witness Having read it, I realized that the history of Auschwitz, of World War Two and of Poland cannot be complete without Pilecki”.
In September 1940 Pilecki allowed himself to be arrested by the Nazi Germans and sent to Auschwitz, where he managed to send reports from the camp, indicating that an extermination of European Jews was being prepared by the Germans.
In 1943, having escaped from Auschwitz, Pilecki reached Warsaw, and a year later fought in the Warsaw Rising.
After the war he went to Italy and joined the Second Corps. He was sent by the Polish intelligence to Poland as a spy.
However, he was captured and executed by the communist authorities in 1948.
His burial place has never been found. In 1990, he was rehabilitated and in 2008 received posthumously the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish state distinction. (mk/pg)