The relentless story of a voluntary interned soldier in the Nazi concentration and extermination camp, which survived to finish … executed by the Soviets in 1948.
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Among the many documentaries dealing with the Nazi ConcentrationNear, this film shines with its originality. First of all because the story told, that of Witold Pilecki (1901-1948), Polish officer interned from his own free will in the hell of Auschwitz (where he passed nine hundred and forty-seven days), is amazing. Then thanks to the precision of the testimonies of Ancient Polish deportees in the main camp of Auschwitz, between 1940 and March 1942, before the Birkenau extermination site, located three kilometers, is commissioned.
Finally, because the colored drawings made by old deportees explain better than any speech the horror lived on a daily basis, between violence of kapos and degrading humiliations. “The camp gauged each of us, testing the character of each. Some slipped into a moral sewer, others saw their personality sparkle like crystal”, write pilecki.
Pre-War, this 38-year-old Hoberteau, brilliant officer, great sports, organizer outstanding, put in practice innovative social ideas in the young independent Poland. In September 1939, he fights the German troops and then the defeat Actée, enlightened and founded with his commander the secret army Polish. Seeing thousands of members of the elite from the country deported to trains to a place called “Auschwitz” by the Germans, he decided to infiltrate to testify to what he urges to be a situation coming out of the ordinary. Its goal ? Send reports to the internal resistance and allies.
Direct control of the atrocities
On September 19, 1939, he gets himself voluntarily by Gestapo at his sister-in-law. His trip to hell begins. The number 4859, red triangle of political detainees on the chest, goes, until its escape, at the end of April 1943, see everything, to note everything, to avoid several times death, organize an effective resistance cell with an astonishing recruitment method , and succeed in bringing out the camp detailed reports sent to Warsaw and London, who will ignore the calls from Pilecki to bomb the camp.
Direct witness of the atrocities, Pilecki will also be the first to testify of the gassing methods used in September 1941 on Soviet prisoners of war. But despite his alerts, the allies will not move. Its history, told in a book, will appear in France only in 2014 (the Pilecki report, Editions Champ Vallon).
After his escape with two deported comrades, he will resume weapons. In July 1945, he joined the military intelligence and in October of the same year, was sent on a mission to Warsaw by the Polish government in exile. In May 1947, arrested by the Soviets he fights, he will be tortured and then executed in May 1948. A mad story from end to end.