Pilecki Institute NYC

Pilecki Institute NYC Pilecki Institute NYC is a public research institution.

It safeguards the values of democracy and freedom, contributes a distinct perspective to Europe’s history by bringing the Polish experience of the twentieth century into international discourse.

Thousands of previously unseen photographs and films are opening a new window onto the German invasion and occupation of...
09/26/2026

Thousands of previously unseen photographs and films are opening a new window onto the German invasion and occupation of Poland.

The Pilecki Institute and the Warsaw Rising Museum have signed a strategic cooperation agreement with ECPAD, the French Defense Communication and Audiovisual Production Center, gaining access to unique German wartime materials that have remained largely unknown in Poland.

ECPAD holds approximately 3.5 million photographs and 16,800 films. Among them is an extraordinary German collection created by German propaganda companies (Propagandakompanien) that accompanied the Wehrmacht during its military campaigns. The materials were secured by the U.S. Army after the fall of the Third Reich in 1945 and later divided among the Allies.

The first phase of the new partnership brings Polish institutions access to more than 10,000 photographs and 41 documentary and operational films, including materials documenting the September 1939 campaign, occupied Poland, and territories that are today part of Ukraine and Belarus.

Among the newly presented photographs are striking images of Warsaw in September 1939—German soldiers writing inscriptions on aerial bombs before air raids, the destruction caused by the bombing, and civilians amid the ruins of the capital.

The Pilecki Institute also presented previously unknown photographs from Bydgoszcz, documenting the entry of German forces and subsequent mass arrests of local residents, as well as early acts of persecution and humiliation of the Jewish population in German-occupied Poland.

What makes these materials particularly important is that in many cases complete sequences of negatives have survived. Until now, historians sometimes knew only individual frames selected and circulated by N**i propaganda. Examining the full sequences makes it possible to restore context, reconstruct the chronology of events, and critically examine how images were used to manipulate the historical narrative.

The materials will now undergo scholarly analysis, identification, and cataloging. They will gradually become available online with historical metadata, while full high-resolution reproductions will be accessible to researchers in the reading rooms of the Pilecki Institute and the Warsaw Rising Museum.

The agreement marks the beginning of a long-term partnership encompassing archival research, scholarship programs, joint publications, and future exhibitions—bringing previously inaccessible sources into historical research and making them available to future generations.

Photo: Jan Sochaczewski/ IP in Warsaw

On September 19, 1940, Witold Pilecki made an extraordinary choice: he deliberately allowed himself to be arrested by th...
09/20/2026

On September 19, 1940, Witold Pilecki made an extraordinary choice: he deliberately allowed himself to be arrested by the Germans so he could enter Auschwitz.

His mission was to infiltrate the camp, establish a resistance network, and inform the outside world about the crimes being committed there.

At the time of Pilecki’s arrival, Auschwitz primarily served as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners. Pilecki would spend more than two and a half years there, organizing resistance, helping fellow prisoners survive, and gathering information about what was happening inside the camp.

In April 1943, he escaped from Auschwitz together with Edward Ciesielski and Jan Redzej. But his fight against totalitarianism did not end there. He later took part in the Warsaw Uprising, and after the war, he continued his intelligence and underground activities under the communist regime.

In 1947, Pilecki was arrested by the communist authorities. After brutal interrogation and a show trial, he was executed on May 25, 1948.

Pilecki’s life became a powerful symbol of resistance to both N**i Germany and the communist regime imposed on postwar Poland.

Today, on the anniversary of his arrest, we remember his courage, his extraordinary sense of duty, and the choices he made in the face of unimaginable danger.

Foto: Photo: Muzeum Dom Rodziny Pileckich/ The Pilecki Family Home Museum

09/20/2026

Witold Pilecki was one of the great heroes of the Second World War. His decision to allow himself to be arrested and sent to Auschwitz was one of the most extraordinary acts of courage of the war.

Today marks the 86th anniversary of Witold Pilecki’s arrest.

On September 19, 1940, Pilecki deliberately allowed himself to be detained during a German roundup in Warsaw, carrying documents in the name of Tomasz Serafiński. Three days later, he was registered at Auschwitz as prisoner no. 4859.

His mission was to establish a resistance network inside the camp and report to the Polish Underground on German crimes.

Jack Fairweather, Acting CEO of the Pilecki Institute (USA) and author of the bestselling biography The Volunteer, spoke to the Polish daily Rzeczpospolita about Pilecki’s extraordinary mission.

Fairweather emphasizes that Pilecki neither acted spontaneously nor simply followed an order. Given the extraordinary danger of the mission, underground commander Stefan Rowecki made clear that he could not compel Pilecki to accept it.

“It was therefore his choice.”

Inside Auschwitz, Pilecki built a clandestine resistance network and worked to help other prisoners survive. Resistance did not mean only gathering intelligence. It also meant sharing food, supporting the weak, and preserving solidarity within a system designed to destroy it.

Pilecki’s reports made their way to Warsaw and to the Polish government-in-exile in London. Fairweather recalls the discovery of one of those reports in a London archive:

“I was shocked to hear Pilecki calling on the Allies to bomb and destroy the camp, even if it meant killing him and the other prisoners. What was happening in Auschwitz was already so terrible that it had to be stopped at any cost.”

Further reports documented the killing of sick prisoners, early experiments with poison gas in 1941 and, later, the mass murder of Jewish families. Pilecki and members of the Polish Underground State repeatedly risked their lives to get information about German crimes and the extermination of Europe’s Jews to the Allies.

After the war, Pilecki was arrested, subjected to a show trial, and executed by Poland’s communist authorities. For decades, his story was suppressed.

Today, his choices continue to resonate.

As Fairweather puts it, Pilecki reminds us that “even in the darkest moments of human history, it is possible to follow one’s moral compass.”

https://historia.rp.pl/historia/art45148331-historia-zignorowanych-raportow-dlaczego-misja-pileckiego-w-auschwitz-jest-wazna-takze-dzis

September 19 marks the 86th anniversary of the day Witold Pilecki deliberately allowed himself to be arrested by the Ger...
09/19/2026

September 19 marks the 86th anniversary of the day Witold Pilecki deliberately allowed himself to be arrested by the Germans in order to be sent to Auschwitz and infiltrate the camp.
Poland’s leading daily, Rzeczpospolita, features an interview with Jack Fairweather, author of the bestselling biography of Witold Pilecki, The Volunteer. Fairweather is a British-American journalist and writer, and the Acting Chief Executive Officer of the Pilecki Institute in New York.

In the interview, Jack Fairweather says:
📌 “Pilecki was given the simple but almost impossible task of reporting to the underground what was happening inside the camp. He likely had the idea that it would be possible to smuggle out reports, and indeed he sort of arranged a point of contact with his sister-in-law Eleonora Ostrowska, from whose apartment he was arrested in Żoliborz on September 19.”

📌 “What Pilecki discovered upon arriving in the camp was — as he put it himself — something not of this earth. Pilecki describes men being shot around him, others beaten to death. Then, once inside the camp, they were stripped and shaved and given numbers in place of names.”

📌 “Pilecki’s story has never seemed as important as it does today, because the idea of volunteering carries with it the necessity of making a choice. Pilecki was constantly making choices and committing himself to documenting the horrors of Auschwitz. I think that, to some extent, his story can inspire us today to engage with the problems around us. Witold Pilecki reminds us that even in the darkest moments of human history, it is possible to be guided by a moral compass.”

The interview, titled “The Story of the Reports That Were Ignored: Why Pilecki’s Mission in Auschwitz Still Matters Today,” was conducted by journalist Marek Kozubal and is available in both the print and online editions of Rzeczpospolita.

Read the full interview online: https://historia.rp.pl/historia/art45148331-historia-zignorowanych-raportow-dlaczego-misja-pileckiego-w-auschwitz-jest-wazna-takze-dzis?fbclid=IwY2xjawUbeZxwZG9mAWV4dG4DYWVtAjEwAGJyaWQRMXluUm9oWXFpc09GS3ZrM1NzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeIkAnW0o77A1MOP89Yg8LDEmC3Rry25UpS3I4tPtbCB8RFS9M-ujXZoNbPM0_aem_YToxjkA0TvWEPUsuPCPeqw

Photo: Pilecki Institute

A remarkable—and previously unpublished—document has recently been added to the Pilecki Institute’s collections: 132 pag...
09/17/2026

A remarkable—and previously unpublished—document has recently been added to the Pilecki Institute’s collections: 132 pages of memoirs written after the war by a German official who served in the civil administration of the General Government, the German occupation regime established in central and southern Poland.

The author was not an outside observer. A member of the SS and N**i Party, he actively sought a position in occupied Poland and worked in Radom from 1943 to 1944.

What makes his account so revealing is its portrayal of the extraordinary as ordinary.

He writes about German officials’ social lives, corruption, and the looting of victims’ property. He records hearing firsthand about the mass murder of Jewish families in Minsk. He describes passing Auschwitz by train and seeing prisoners and thick black smoke rising from the camp’s chimneys. He also writes about the poverty, dispossession, and public executions of Poles—all while continuing to describe the routines of daily life.

The memoirs offer a rare view from inside the machinery of occupation: a world in which persecution, dispossession, and mass violence could coexist with careers, friendships, meals, and ordinary routines. They reveal not only what happened, but something equally important—how people could become accustomed to a system built on radical inequality and violence.
The newly acquired archival materials are now being studied and processed by the Pilecki Institute. In the future, they will be made available to researchers in the Institute’s archival reading rooms in Warsaw and Berlin.

More about the document:
https://instytutpileckiego.pl/pl/instytut/aktualnosci/dr-joanna-nikel-wspomnienia-niemieckiego-urzednika-z-pobytu
----------------
Due to the anonymity restrictions associated with the document, an illustrative photograph from the collection of the National Digital Archives (NAC) was used: 3/2/0/-/4714. Caption: Governor Hans Frank at the border of the General Government.

What an inspiring evening at the Pilecki Institute NYC. We had the honor of welcoming Eva Paddock, a Holocaust survivor ...
09/14/2026

What an inspiring evening at the Pilecki Institute NYC. We had the honor of welcoming Eva Paddock, a Holocaust survivor who escaped N**i-occupied Europe through the Kindertransport at just three and a half years old. In July 1939, Eva and her sister were among the children transported from Prague to England on one of the last Czech Kindertransport trains organized by Sir Nicholas Winton.

In conversation with Jack Fairweather, CEO of the Pilecki Institute in America, Eva shared her remarkable story of rescue, resilience, and rebuilding her life in a new country.

Drawing on her decades-long career as a teacher and headteacher, she also offered deeply thoughtful reflections on how the Holocaust should be taught—with care, sensitivity, and a focus on individual human experience.

“The Holocaust cannot be taught by opening a textbook. If we want it to have meaning for present and future generations, they need to understand how it could have happened [...] It has to be taught through personal experience first—and then we can go backward.”

Eva devoted her professional life to education, teaching at every level—from early childhood through graduate school—and continues to support Holocaust education internationally.

The evening also featured a presentation of Sound in the Silence, an innovative educational program developed by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, introduced by its Artistic Director, Dan Wolf.

A hip-hop artist, theater-maker, educator, and storyteller, Dan combines music, personal narrative, and history to help young people engage meaningfully with difficult chapters of the past. His work has been presented in concert halls, museums, schools, and memorial sites around the world.

Thank you to Eva Paddock, Jack Fairweather, Dan Wolf, and everyone who joined us for this moving and memorable evening.

Special thanks to the event partners: the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, as well as the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, the Silent Heroes Memorial Center, and BKGE Oldenburg.

Photos: Anna Fedisz

How do we pass the memory of the Holocaust on to a new generation? And how should Holocaust education respond as the wor...
09/11/2026

How do we pass the memory of the Holocaust on to a new generation? And how should Holocaust education respond as the world—and the way we remember the past—continues to change?

These questions were at the heart of “Memory in Transition: A Transatlantic Perspective on Holocaust Education,” a seminar presented by the Pilecki Institute in New York and the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS), accompanying the traveling exhibition Between Life and Death: Stories of Rescue during the Holocaust.

The evening brought together scholars from five countries for a transatlantic conversation on how the Holocaust is remembered and taught today.

Prof. Daniel Blatman (Israel) explored national memory and historical transmission through the experience of Israel; Prof. Rune Christiansen (Denmark) discussed occupation, collaboration, rescue, and national self-images in Western and Northern Europe; Prof. Stephan Lehnstaedt (Germany) addressed perpetration, responsibility, and civic education in Germany and Austria; Dr. Richard Quinlan (USA) examined memory at a distance and civic frameworks in the United States; and Prof. Piotr Trojański (Poland) focused on Central and Eastern Europe and the Holocaust as local history.

Together, they explored Holocaust remembrance not as something fixed, but as a dynamic and evolving process—shaped by historical experience, changing social and political contexts, public debate, and different educational priorities across countries.

The evening was opened by Karol Madaj, Director of the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw; Jack Fairweather, President of the Pilecki Institute in New York; and Rafał Rogulski, Director of ENRS.

As part of the program, guests were also invited to experience Between Life and Death through a guided tour led by Prof. Piotr Trojański, ENRS academic consultant, bringing the themes of the evening’s discussion into direct conversation with the individual stories of rescue presented in the exhibition.

Thank you to our speakers, guests, and everyone who joined us for an evening of thoughtful exchange across borders, histories, and perspectives.

Between Life and Death: Stories of Rescue during the Holocaust is currently on view at the Pilecki Institute, 92 Greenwich Street, New York City.

Join us tonight at the Pilecki Institute in New York for a special conversation with Holocaust survivor Eva Paddock, int...
09/10/2026

Join us tonight at the Pilecki Institute in New York for a special conversation with Holocaust survivor Eva Paddock, interviewed by Jack Fairweather.

📅 September 10 at 6:00 PM
📍 Pilecki Institute, 92 Greenwich Street, New York

Eva Paddock was just three and a half years old when she escaped N**i-occupied Europe through the Kindertransport. In July 1939, she and her sister were among the children sent from Prague to safety in England on one of the last Czech Kindertransport trains organized by Sir Nicholas Winton.

During this special conversation and Q&A, Eva will share her remarkable story of rescue, resilience, displacement, and rebuilding a life in a new country. Her personal experience offers a powerful opportunity to reflect on the circumstances that made rescue possible—and on the lasting impact of survival and starting over after the Holocaust.

The conversation will be led by Jack Fairweather, CEO of the Pilecki Institute in New York, British journalist and war correspondent, and author of the international bestseller The Volunteer, the story of Witold Pilecki. The book received the 2019 Costa Book Award.

Organized by the Pilecki Institute and the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity (ENRS), the event accompanies the exhibition Between Life and Death: Stories of Rescue During the Holocaust, currently on view at the Pilecki Institute in New York.

We hope you will join us for this deeply personal conversation and an opportunity to hear Eva Paddock’s story in her own words.

Tonight at 6 PM.

"Memory in Transition: A Transatlantic Perspective on Holocaust Education" – this Wednesday, September 9 at 6PM at the P...
09/07/2026

"Memory in Transition: A Transatlantic Perspective on Holocaust Education" – this Wednesday, September 9 at 6PM at the Pilecki Institute, 92 Greenwich Street, New York, NY

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