Witold Pilecki Institute of Solidarity and Fortitude was established in 2017. It is intended to take care of the memory of people who deserve Poland. He conducts historical research, collects, archives and digitizes witness accounts, educates and promotes cognition about the heroism of Poles, pays scholarships. He besides admits the Virtus et Fraternitas Medals (Latin of Courage and Brotherhood) to people who helped Poles suffering from totalitarianism.
Wednesday night The Pilecki Institute took the level on Maximilian Schnepf and his participation in the Augustowska Oblast, a brutal operation carried out in 1945 by the Soviets with the support of Polish structures specified as the safety Office and the People's Army of Poland. The intent of the action was break the underground of independency and anti-communist in the vicinity of Suwałk and Augustów.
Over 7 1000 Poles were detained in the process, who were then imprisoned in camps created by the Soviets. There they were tortured, including wrapping their bodies with barbed wire and being placed in water-filled pits. About 2,000 people died without a trace, and their families were unsuccessfully searching for information about their loved ones for years.
The Pilecki Institute has published a series of entries
In published entries, the Pilecki Institute stated that "Oława Augustowska was a russian crime, supported by folk WP and safety apparatus".
Another comment added that "Lieutenant Maximilian Sznepf commanded a 110-160-soldier folk unit that held 22 people, any of whom never returned home".
It is further written that "the hunt active 45,000 soldiers, the share of Schnepf's unit represents only 2 promes of these forces."
An avalanche of comments online. "Institute justifies murder"
After a series of entries on the X platform, quite a few comments appeared in which Pilecki Institute was accused that it was deliberately trying to diminish Maximilian Sznepf's participation in Oław Augustowska.
"We will not let this government to censor past and destruct memory! Remember the hangman of Augustów's Oblast Maximilian Schnepf — absent from the Pilecki Institute exhibition,” wrote erstwhile Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
The Pilecki Institute later stated that “the attempts made by Mateusz Morawiecki of the Schnepf symbol of Augustów Oława are clearly political, due to household kinship, not historical significance.”
The erstwhile Ambassador of Poland to Israel and the United States Marek Magierowski, who writes about “infamia”.
In turn, erstwhile Deputy Minister of abroad Affairs Marcin Przycz stated that the Pilecki Institute "justifies present the murders committed on Polish patriots by russian minions".
Hanna Radziejowska, head of the Berlin branch of the Pilecki Institute, pointed out that victims of totalitarianism “are not statistics, but people with a face and history”.
“What is...,” wrote Minister of Climate and Environment for PSL Miłosz Motyka.
