There are people who, in the spur of the moment, perform almost inhuman acts of bravery and courage. People at whom the events of the moment are thrust in such a way that the person either overcomes them or is utterly destroyed.
Then there are those who willingly enter into events of great peril after a great deal of prior thought and consideration, yet go anyway.
Witold Pilecki is one such person.
“I think he knew, he realized what he was getting himself into,” said Jacek Pawlowicz, a historian at Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance. “But even so, he was not prepared for the things he was actually able to witness.”
You see, Mr. Pilecki, after hearing of the horrors going on in a nearby prison camp decided to get arrested and be brought to that camp to investigate further. The prison camp was not just any prison camp, hellish as they might have been.
The prison camp Mr. Pilecki volunteered to enter was likely the most infamous of all. A camp where up to 1,500,000 prisoners were executed, or better said, exterminated.
Auschwitz.