The Times of London recently revealed a previously unknown facet regarding access the Allies had to events taking place inside Auschwitz during World War II, following an affair whose full details were released only recently and which has been dubbed possibly "the bravest act of espionage" of the war.
Documents recently published for the first time by a Polish archive show a Polish officer, a member of an underground anti-Nazi group, named Witold Pilecki, volunteered to be imprisoned at Auschwitz in order to transmit information to the Allies and to form resistance cells within the camp.
Under the pseudonym Tomasz Serafinski, the 39-year-old spy infiltrated Auschwitz in September 1940 and spent two-and-a-half years there, maintaining constant contact with the Allies through the Polish underground and recruiting underground fighters, who comprised most of the prisoners at first, forming a clandestine movement against the Nazis.
In one of the reports smuggled to the Polish underground, Pilecki wrote, "In order to assure greater security I have taken the view that each cell of five will not be aware of another cell. This is also why I have avoided people registered here under their real names. Some are involved in the most incompetent conspiracies and have their own plans for rebellion in the camp."
In another report he wrote, "The gigantic machinery of the camp spewing out dead bodies has claimed many of my friends... We have sent messages to the outside world, which were then transmitted back by foreign radio stations. Consequently the camp guards are very angry now."
