Cyra: Pilecki and Cyrankiewicz

myslpolska.info 1 year ago

On 1 September 2023, the Polish premiere of the feature movie "Witold Report" is announced in cinemas, which depicts the communicative of the protagonist of the Second planet War – captain Witold Pilecki, the hero of the fight against 2 totalitarianisms of the 20th century – German and Soviet.

The directors of this movie are: Krzysztof Łukaszewicz and Leszek Wosiewicz. The production is performed by: Witold Pilecki – Przemysław Wyszyński and Paulina Chapko (Maria Pilecka), Mariusz Jakus (Eugeniusz Chimczak), Karol Wróblewski (Józef Rozański) and Paweł Paprocki (Józef Cyrankiewicz). However, I have large doubts whether the camp fates of the second Oświęcim conspirator, Józef Cyrankiewicz, the postwar long-term prime minister in the Polish People's Republic, are true, but I am increasingly convinced that this is not the case.

In 1975 curator Barbara Jarosz at the Auschwitz Museum, together with the then manager of the archive Tadeusz Iwaszka, began to prepare a fresh exhibition on the camp opposition movement in Block 11. After years, Barbara Jarosz recalled: “In the early 1990s, Dr. Józef Garliński of London watched over the completion of her script, who in the 1960s found Witold Pilecki’s study written in Italy and sent to the Archives of the Underground Poland Studies in London. Earlier, the cognition of Pilecki was small. Dr. Garliński, erstwhile Auschwitz prisoner and officer of the National Army, who could not be regarded as sympathy for the Polish People's Republic, stated in 1993 that the exhibition about the camp opposition must have portraits of both Pilecki and Cyrankiewicz, as he deserved it too." See: Adam Cyra, “Józef Cyrankiewicz at Auschwitz KL” 9 January 2015 (blog of Adam Cyra), Bohdan Piętek, “Józef Cyrankiewicz did not commit vile acts in Auschwitz”, 4 May 2018 (blog of Bohdan Piętek).

After the war, politics separated their paths, but the death conviction given to the heroic Rotmaster in March 1948 had nothing to do with Auschwitz and the conviction of Cyrankiewicz that he had killed Pilecki to get free of an uncomfortable witness who could have denounced him as a Gestapo confident, are completely unfounded and cannot be confirmed in the historical sources presently available.

Several times in my publications I described Józef Cyrankiewicz's stay in the Oświęcim camp, e.g. "The Spadochronizer "Urban". Lieutenant Stefan Jasieński (1914-1945)”, Oświęcim 2006, or “Rotmaster Pilecki. Volunteer to Auschwitz”, Warsaw 2014. In addition, I urge seeing my online exhibition "Army Conspiration in Auschwitz" and reading my online lesson "Operation in Auschwitz" which Józef Cyrankiewicz was an active participant.

"Ich bin gesund und fiihle mich Gut" (I am healthy and feeling well) – so much about the prisoner could have known his family. From the Auschwitz Conzentrationslager, which was cut off from the environment – secured by double barrier with barbed wires hung on concrete poles and connected to a three-phase current with 220 volts of defender towers additionally on 2 sides with a concrete wall and the alleged interest region of Interestsengebite – no another information was to be received. The book presents – through the flues published in it – the hidden fact about a camp forbidden to the Nazis for which the prison could pay with its life. Grypsy are permanent traces of the camp's conspiracy conducted by Józef Cyrankiewicz and Stanisław Kłodziński and the prisoners mentioned in the secret correspondence of footnotes to her and in the Introduction and those not mentioned but besides deserved. The grits are the fruit and evidence of a conflict undertaken and developed under highly hard circumstantial conditions. They show the nature and to a large degree the degree of the prisoners' opposition to the crimes as well as the dangers of constantly present in Auschwitz besides uncover and paper the profoundly humanitarian sense of their struggle. They were written and sent not only for ad hoc purposes, but besides to make historical documentation which is now a valuable origin of cognition about the camp and allows for more comprehensive investigation into its history."

From the Introduction to the Book Prof. Irena Paczyńska, “Grypsy z Konzentrationslager Auschwitz Józef Cyrankiewicz and Stanisław Kłodziński”, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie 2013.

Adam Cyra

Auschwitz, August 22, 2023.

Editorial: The author's concerns proved to be right, the final version of the movie was based on the opposition of the character of the unbreakable Pilecki and the confidant Cyrankiewicz. Let us add that Dr. Adam Cyra is the author of Pilecki's best biography so far: “Rotmistry Pilecki. Volunteer to Auschwitz”, Warsaw 2014, p. 446.

Think Poland, No. 37-38 (10-17.09.2023)

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