Captain Witold Pilecki. Source: wikipedia
The project was ultimately supported by both Mayor of Warsaw Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz and the clubs of chief coalition partner Civic Platform, and principal opposition party Law and Justice.
“Now begins the most important work,”commented Sebastian Kaleta, chairman of the Youth for Poland association which proposed the monument.
“However, we are optimistic, and most importantly, the town hall has backed our idea,” he added.
Witold Pilecki's exploits were a taboo subject in Poland up until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.
The former cavalry officer and resistance legend was executed following a communist show trial in 1948.
During the Nazi occupation, Pilecki had himself arrested so as to garner intelligence material for the Polish underground at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Once there, he fomented resistance against the occupiers.
He escaped from the camp in 1943. Meanwhile, his detailed report chronicling details of the Holocaust was sent to the Polish government-in-exile in London.
After a Soviet-backed communist regime took power in Poland after the war, Pilecki continued to collect intelligence, initially on behalf of exiled general Wladyslaw Anders.
However, he was arrested in May 1947, and executed the following year.
Recent state-backed digs at unmarked graves in the military section of Warsaw's Powazki cemetery have been aimed at locating the remains of resistance luminaries executed under communist rule.
Several figures have been identified thus far, and it is hoped that Pilecki's remains will be identified, as work continues.
As of yet, the location of the Pilecki statue has not been confirmed.
Opposition party Law and Justice want the statue to replace a controversial 1945 monument in tribute to 'Polish-Soviet Brotherhood in Arms'. (nh)
Source: IAR