International Holocaust Remembrance Day is marked around the world on January 27, the day the Auschwitz death camp was ultimately liberated. Astonishingly, there was one Christian man, Witold Pilecki, who went there voluntarily.
Witold Pilecki and the horrors of Auschwitz
When Hitler invaded Poland, the Poles imagined their battle of self-defense would last a few weeks. They were not prepared for what was about to happen. Rumors began that camps were being organized and people were vanishing, so in order to discover what was happening, Witold Pilecki, a Polish operative, deliberately and voluntarily chose to go into Auschwitz.
His nephew described what happened in a BBC documentary. Pilecki was in an area where Germans were rounding people up and carting them off, and staying in his sister’s apartment.
“The concierge, Mr. Jan Wilianski, came running to our door. He said, “Mr Witold, the Germans are taking men from their houses—we have a good hiding spot in the cellar.” And my uncle said, “Mr. Jan, this time I won’t be using it.”
My uncle prepared himself and got dressed. There was knocking at the door…” His nephew says that as Pilecki was being taken away he understood it was all planned.1
Today Witold Pilecki is the only person known to have voluntarily gone into the Auschwitz concentration camp. On day one, Pilecki was hit in the mouth with a bat and all his teeth were smashed. He was beaten, tortured, and starved along with all the other inmates. He understood well the mistreatment of those incarcerated in the camps but in order to find out the scale of the operation, the numbers being brought and the transportation bringing them, he created networks to find information.
For almost three years he worked tirelessly to get the message to the outside world about what was happening. Auschwitz may have started off as a prisoner of war camp for Poles but it soon became an industrial killing plant for the mass extermination of Jewish people. He urged the Poles and their allies to attack the camp but his warnings and pleas were unheeded. The Holocaust of six million was the terrible result.
The Jewish Virtual Library tells of some of his endeavors and heroism:
“He began sending information about what was going on inside the camp and confirming that the Nazis were seeking the extermination of the Jews to Britain and the United States as early as 1941. Pilecki used a courier system that the Polish Resistance operated throughout occupied Europe to channel the reports to the Allies.
Documents released from the Polish Archives that provided details of these reports again raised questions as to why the Allies, particularly Winston Churchill, never did anything to put an end to the atrocities being committed that they learned of so early in the war.”2
Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, described Pilecki as “an example of inexplicable goodness at a time of inexplicable evil. There is ever-growing awareness of Poles helping Jews in the Holocaust, and how they paid with their lives, like Pilecki. We must honor these examples and follow them today in the parts of the world where there are horrors again.”
Christians who voluntarily suffered
As horrific and hard to understand as Pilecki’s voluntary sacrifice may have been, he was not the first believer to willingly suffer for a cause on that scale. A community of believers based in Moravia had heard of some of the horrors happening to those in slavery in the United States, and were moved to deep compassion. Several were so distressed to hear of what the slaves were subjected to that they willingly went as slaves to serve alongside the African captives, in order to share the hope of the Gospel with them. The Moravians themselves had been a persecuted Christian community and understood what it was to suffer, but the extent of their readiness to suffer for the sake of others is hard to fathom. Their heavenly reward will surely be great.
Your people will offer themselves freely
on the day of your power,
in holy garments;
from the womb of the morning,
the dew of your youth will be yours.
(Psalm 110:3)
Another believer who laid down his life voluntarily was Richard Wurmbrand. As a Messianic Jewish pastor, Wurmbrand’s church was flourishing when the Communists took over Romania. The new authorities laid down the law, restricting what pastors could and couldn’t preach and effectively gagging the Gospel entirely. Resistance would mean imprisonment, torture, and even death. In his book “Tortured for His Faith”, Wurmbrand describes his wife’s response to the wicked regime and their demands:
“Sabina told me, “Richard, stand up and wash away this shame from the face of Christ! They are spitting in His face.”
I said to her, “If I do so, you lose your husband.”
She replied, “I don’t wish to have a coward as a husband.””
Both Richard and Sabina made their decision to give up everything for the sake of Jesus. Richard took a stand with the encouragement of his wife and was soon imprisoned. He spent some fifteen years in prison, eight of which in solitary confinement, and enduring torture almost every day. Meanwhile, Sabina was also taken to a concentration camp, leaving their young son to fend for himself. Remarkably all three survived and were eventually reunited. Moreover, they went on to do mighty exploits on behalf of persecuted believers all around the world. Whether we see it in this life or the next, there is great power in the sacrifice of a life laid down for God.
Greater love has no man than this
“When I was four years old, Nazis burst into my bedroom and sent me and my family to Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. We were soon released and I was smuggled out of Germany by a Christian woman,” Holocaust survivor Sanne DeWitt wrote.
Sanne DeWitt has been affected not only by the horrors of the Holocaust but also the profound courage of Christians who risk their own wellbeing for the sake of others.
She was rescued by a believer as a little girl, but now that she’s almost 90 she is growing increasingly uneasy with the tide of popular opinion turning against Jewish people once again—something that feels very familiar to her escaping life under the Nazis. Will Christians stand up to the raging mob now?
“After this harrowing experience, not much in the Bay Area could scare me,” she wrote as Chairman of the Israel Action Committee of the East Bay. “But since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the hatred towards Jews that I have seen in Berkeley terrifies me more than anything I have experienced while living here. I am still reeling from being called a liar at a Berkeley City Council meeting, where I asked for a proclamation to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day and spoke about October 7. The Jews at that meeting were circled and called “Zionist pigs” by menacing protesters.”3
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Christian heroes like Witold Pilecki, Richard Wurmbrand and the Moravians sacrificed so much, but will we have the courage to take a stand in our day? How much of our current comforts are we willing to lose? Just as Pilecki and Wurmbrand recognized what the rising tide of totalitarianism in their day would bring, and the Moravians saw the dire need of those trapped in slavery, the world needs heroes again today who can see what is happening around us and who are brave enough to take a stand, no matter what the cost. We know from God’s word that horrors like the Holocaust will happen again, but will we be ready to respond the way we hope that we might? Are we prepared to lay down our lives? There is no greater love. And the rewards will last forever.
At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever. (Daniel 12:1-3)
- https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0b711n3/the-man-who-volunteered-to-be-imprisoned-in-auschwitz
- https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/witold-pilecki
- https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/19/opinions/holocaust-survivor-on-berkeley-antisemitism-passover-dewitt/index.html
