{"id":37583,"date":"2013-09-14T06:15:13","date_gmt":"2013-09-14T10:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=37583"},"modified":"2013-09-14T20:44:17","modified_gmt":"2013-09-15T00:44:17","slug":"beyond-bravery-addendum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=37583","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Bravery: an Addendum"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve written a previous article about Captain Witold Pilecki<\/a>, the Polish Army officer who volunteered<\/i> to go to Auschwitz in order to gather intelligence and organize the inmates – and who stayed there for over 2 1\/2 \u00a0years, then escaped.\u00a0 In that article, I noted that a book had been recently written about his time at Auschwitz:\u00a0 \u00a0The Auschwitz Volunteer:\u00a0 Beyond Bravery<\/span>.\u00a0 It\u2019s essentially an annotated English-language translation of Pilecki\u2019s expanded 1945 report of his actions and observations while an inmate.<\/p>\n

At the time I wrote my first article about Pilecki, I\u2019d not had a chance to read the book.\u00a0 I\u2019ve since obtained a copy and read it.<\/p>\n

The book deals almost exclusively with Pilecki\u2019s time at Auschwitz and the period immediately following his escape.\u00a0 It is not an easy book to read, nor is it a particularly enjoyable one.<\/p>\n

Find a copy and read it anyway.<\/p>\n

You owe it to yourself to force yourself to read it.\u00a0 You also owe that to the millions who perished during the Holocaust – and to those who perished in other genocides and in other state-sponsored, industrial-scale organized murder campaigns that have occurred throughout human history.<\/p>\n

You will be appalled, amazed, disgusted \u2013 and uplifted. While reading the book, often you\u2019ll be all of these at once.<\/p>\n

A sample:\u00a0 here is an incident Pilecki reports from his time at Auschwitz during the summer of 1941.\u00a0 The incident occurred after three inmates were discovered to have escaped.\u00a0 Policy at the time in Auschwitz was to execute 10 other prisoners from the escapee’s “block” for each individual who attempted escape, presumably to act as a deterrent to future attempts.<\/p>\n

A \u201cdeath selection\u201d was held immediately following the roll call in which an escapee\u2019s absence had been noted.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Camp Commandant and his retinue arrived in front of the block in which the escapee had been living, now standing in ten ranks, and walking down a rank he would point to inmates who appealed to him, or maybe to those who did not.<\/i><\/p>\n

This rank would then take \u201cfive paces forward\u201d and the whole retinue then walked down the next rank.<\/i><\/p>\n

Some ranks had several people picked; others had none.<\/i><\/p>\n

Those who looked death bravely in the eye were usually not chosen.<\/i><\/p>\n

Not everyone could take the tension, and sometimes one would run forward, behind the inspecting team\u2019s back, to the rank already inspected; these types were usually spotted and taken off to their death.<\/i><\/p>\n

It once happened that a young man was chosen, whereupon an old man, a priest, stepped out of the ranks and asked the Camp Commandant to take him and release the young man.<\/i><\/p>\n

This was a powerful moment and the block froze in amazement.<\/i><\/p>\n

The Commandant agreed.<\/i><\/p>\n

The heroic priest went to his death and the other inmate returned to the ranks.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The translator, Jarek Garlinski, adds the following footnote:<\/p>\n

This was the famous case of Father Maksymilian Kolbe, who took the place of Franciszek Gajowniczek, who had a family.\u00a0 Afterwards, camp authorities more or less left Gajowniczek alone and he survived. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Father Kolbe was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“We should thank God that such men lived.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve written a previous article about Captain Witold Pilecki, the Polish Army officer who volunteered to … Beyond Bravery: an Addendum<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}