Poland Seeks to Identify Volunteer for Auschwitz Infiltration Mission
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by News Editor
Bunk beds in a barrack at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Photo: wiki commons.
Las Vegas Sun/AP- It could hardly have been a riskier mission: infiltrate Auschwitz to chronicle Nazi atrocities. Witold Pilecki survived nearly three years as an inmate in the death camp, managing to smuggle out word of executions before making a daring escape. But the Polish resistance hero was crushed by the post-war communist regime _ tried on trumped-up charges and executed.
Six decades on, Poland hopes Pilecki’s remains will be identified among the entangled skeletons and shattered skulls of resistance fighters being excavated from a mass grave on the edge of Warsaw’s Powazki Military Cemetery. The exhumations are part of a movement in the resurgent, democratic nation to officially recognize its war-time heroes and 20th century tragedies.
