Today's historical badass...

[usernamenumber]

…via @RealTimeWWII, which is an a-mazing Twitter feed:

Witold Pilecki. A member of the Polish resistance, who was caught on purpose to report on Auschwitz from the inside.

While there, he…

• Organized a secret prisoner’s union. 
• Sent previously-unknown intelligence about the horrors there to the outside world
• …using a radio he and the other prisoners built themselves in secret
• Then he and a friend escaped and went back to Poland.
•  …with documents they’d stolen from the Nazis along the way. You know, just in case anyone was doubting their badassness at this point.

Four years later, he was executed for treason by the communist government in Poland, which he’d spent the intervening years fighting as part of the underground.

Dayum. Hollywood, are you reading this??

(Full disclosure: the above is all based on skimming a wikipedia article— if it inspires you to investigate further, great! But it is not authoritative by its self!)

Comments

[beowabbit]

Yeah, my mind sort of boggled when I first heard about him.

[nennivian.livejournal.com]

I totally heard about this guy on the radio (probably NPR, since I listen to little else), so I'm putting in my vote for his story being both true and awesome.