Rotamaster Witold Pilecki 1901-1948, Jacek Pawlowicz, Warsaw 2008, 288 pages

In the resolution adopted this year by the Polish Senate ‘on restoring the heroic figure of Rotamaster Witold Pilecki to Polish collective memory’, it states ‘Witold Pilecki's life is a model of how to live and how - if necessary - to die for the motherland. The memory of him should be one of the elements of building the Polish collective identity.’

Pilecki began his service to Poland during the war with the Bolsheviks in 1920. He fought in the campaign of September 1939 and then in the structures of the Polish Underground State.

In 1940, carrying out the mission assigned by the Union of Armed Struggle, he voluntarily surrendered to deportation to Auschwitz, where he collected information on the camp and started organising a pro-independence conspiracy. In the face of deconspiration threats he decided to escape, which he managed to successfully carry out.

In 1944 Pilecki fought in the Warsaw Uprising in the Chrobry II battalion and since 1945 – in the Polish Army Corps in Italy, where following the decision of General Władysław Anders he returned to the communist Poland to restore the broken intelligence structures of the Polish Republic in Exile.

Pilecki was detained in May 1947 and put under arrest at Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw where he was subject to cruel interrogation. Despite the tortures, until the end Pilecki kept a heroic soldier attitude. He remained faithful to the motto: ‘God, Honour, Motherland.'

Before World War II, Pilecki innovatively managed a family estate in Sukurcze. He organised social assistance, agricultural groups and military training courses. He raised a family and was also developing artistic skills - drawing, painting and writing poems.

Until 1989 any information on achievements and the fate of Witold Pilecki was subject to strict censorship in the People's Republic of Poland. The place of his burial to this day remains unknown.

The album is an illustrated presentation of the achievements of Witold Pilecki. It contains previously unpublished photographs from the family collection of the Rotamaster. The author of the publication, Jacek Pawłowicz of the Warsaw branch of the Institute, presents Pilecki's life from the earliest age to his cruel murder, carried out on May 25, 1948 The album features photographs showing Pilecki as a scout and a participant of the Polish – Bolshevik war of 1919-1920. In free Poland, we see him as an active citizen of the Nowogrodzka Land. Then, during World War II operations - as a soldier of the Polish Underground State, a volunteer in the Auschwitz camp, the insurgent of the Chrobry II battalion, and after the war - a conspirator building an intelligence network. The last chapter presents Pilecki’s arrest, sentence and martyrous death.