Today in the Polish Parliament a scientific conference entitled Rotmistrz Witold Pilecki - Soldier - Pole - Patriot was held. Family members, historians, youth and invited guests talked about difficult life experiences, unbroken attitude and models for the future connected with the figure of Rotmistrz. The organizers of the meeting emphasized that the idea of the project is guided by several goals, including the upbringing of the young generation of Poles with a sense of pride in belonging to a Nation with a rich history and its heroes as well as magnificent artistic achievements and impressive objects of material culture.

 

In a letter sent to the participants of the conference, the Speaker of the Sejm thanked them for popularizing an extraordinary and heroic figure, who was devoted to his Homeland and patriotic values until the end of his days.

 

We owe a huge debt of memory to Witold Pilecki. For many years of communist Poland he was pushed into oblivion, he was labeled a traitor and enemy of the people's state. Yet how he must have impressed the new authorities with his courage, intelligence and determination, that Józef Cyrankiewicz - also a former Auschwitz prisoner - attributed to himself the conspiratorial, camp biography of the Rotamaster. This lie functioned in the collective consciousness until the 1990s.

Witold Pilecki's heroism and his fight against the Nazi occupant did not protect him from being arrested, tortured by the Nazi prison system, and the shameful punishment of death by a shot to the back of the head. Like other soldiers of the independence underground, whose honor did not allow them to remain passive in the face of the communist terror and Soviet occupation, he was condemned to be slandered and erased from the pages of history.

Today we give him back his due honor, we bring him back to public memory, and his heroism and nobility are set as a model of patriotic and Christian attitude. Pilecki's legacy should be brought back to the public eye as often as possible, so that it remains present in the consciousness of the Polish people. Marek Kuchciński wrote.

 

The event was also accompanied by an exhibition of artworks: Rotmistrz Witold Pilecki Bohater Niezwyciężony.

More about Rotamaster Witold Pilecki: https://marekkuchcinski.pl/wazne-daty/rotmistrz-pilecki-bohater-niezlomny-ochotnik-auschwitz/