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Pages from Witold’s report of 1943
Witold Pilecki
Polish History Museum
Warszawa, Poland
In 1942, mass transports of European Jews started to come to KL Auschwitz II – Birkenau, which was the way of implementing the plan of total extermination of the Jewish population. Then, the Germans started to erect a complex of four huge crematoria, which were completed between March and June of 1943 – that terrifying and most tragic machine of the Holocaust. Before his escape, Witold Pilecki had seen the beginnings of the murderous practices and wrote about them in his reports, also in the report of 1943. The information reached the Allied countries via the Polish Government in London.
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Details
- Title: Pages from Witold’s report of 1943
- Creator: Witold Pilecki
- Date: 1943
- Location: Warsaw
- Transcript:It does not include, however, huge numbers of people brought here with the aim of prompt depriving them of their lives which was being done a few kilometres from the camp – in so called ‘Birkenau’ and near the Auschwitz branch – the camp in Rajsk where whole transports of people delivered here by trains and trucks were being gassed; sometimes a few thousand a day; their total number calculated in August of 1942 exceeded 800 000* and in March of 1943 amounted to more than a million and a half people. The majority of them were Jews but there were also Czechs, Germans and others.** Footnotes for "Raport Witolda" (in:) Adam Cyra, "Biuletyn Towarzystwa Opieki nad Oświęcimiem" 1991, No. 12, pp. 76-77. * Overstated numbers ** False information, after the selection, only Jews were annihilated in gas chambersHide TranscriptShow Transcript
- Contributor: The Central Archives of Modern Records
- Original Source: The Central Archives of Modern Records
- Credit: The Central Archives of Modern Records | signature 202/XVIII/1
- Collection: Witold Pilecki
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