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Article posted: 9/4/2012 9:41 AM

Poland hopes to identify remains of Auschwitz hero

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In this 1940 photo provided by the Institute of National Remembrance is seen Witold Pilecki as an inmate of the Auschwitz Birkenau death camp.

Associated Press

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Soldiers and scouts stand in front of coffins containing remains of World War II heroes during a ceremony ending archeological works at the Powazki cemetery in Warsaw, Poland. More than a hundred skeletons of Poles murdered by the communist regime after World War II have been excavated from a secret mass grave on the edge of Warsaw's Powazki Military Cemetery during recent digging works. Historians hope to identify among them the remains of Witold Pilecki who volunteered to be an Auschwitz inmate to secretly gather evidence of atrocities there.

Associated Press

This photo taken in 1920s and provided by the Institute of National Remembrance shows Witold Pilecki. More than a hundred skeletons of Poles murdered by the communist regime after World War II have been excavated from a secret mass grave on the edge of Warsaw's Powazki Military Cemetery during recent digging works. Historians hope to identify among them the remains of Witold Pilecki who volunteered to be an Auschwitz inmate to secretly gather evidence of atrocities there.

Associated Press

Zofia Pilecka-Optulowicz, daughter of a Polish World War II hero Witold Pilecki murdered by the communists in 1948, attends a ceremony ending archeological works at the Powazki cemetery in Warsaw, Poland.

Associated Press

About this Article

It could hardly have been a riskier mission: infiltrate Auschwitz to chronicle Nazi atrocities. Witold Pilecki survived nearly three years as an inmate in the death camp, managing to smuggle out word of executions before making a daring escape. But the Polish resistance hero was crushed by the post-war communist regime and executed. Six decades on, Poland hopes Pilecki's remains will be identified among the entangled skeletons and shattered skulls of resistance fighters being excavated from a mass grave on the edge of Warsaw's Powazki Military Cemetery.