Jerzy Bielecki (Auschwitz survivor)

Jerzy Bielecki
Bielecki in 1944 after he escaped from Auschwitz and joined the Home Army
Born	28 March 1921 Słaboszów, Poland
Died	October 20, 2011(2011-10-20) (aged 90) Nowy Targ
Occupation	Social worker
Notes
Auschwitz survivor, Bielecki escaped to freedom with Cyla Cybulska in 1944. He became Head of postwar Christian Association of the Auschwitz Families.

Jerzy Bielecki (28 March 1921 – 20 October 2011, Nowy Targ) was a Polish Catholic social worker, best known as one of the few inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp who managed to escape successfully. With the help of other resistance members in the camp, he escaped in 1944 together with his Jewish girlfriend, who was an inmate of Auschwitz II. In 1985 Bielecki received the Righteous Among the Nations award. He also co-founded and headed the postwar Christian Association of the Auschwitz Families.

Bielecki was born in 1921 in Słaboszów, Poland. A pupil at a gymnasium in Kraków, at the outbreak of World War II he decided to join the Polish Army in the West. While crossing the border with Hungary on 7 May 1940, en route to trying to join up with the Polish Army stationed in France, he was caught and arrested by the Gestapo on the false suspicion that he was a resistance fighter. A month later, on 14 June 1940, he was sent to the newly created Auschwitz concentration camp with the first transport of 728 Polish political prisoners. (His concentration camp number is 243). His decent knowledge of the German language allowed him to work, among other jobs at various times, at a (future subcamp of Auschwitz, German: Wirtschaftshof Babitz) as a clerk, where he had occasional access to additional food and came in contact with the Polish anti-Nazi resistance, the Home Army.

Assigned to an Arbeitskommando at Auschwitz, Bielecki met Cyla Cybulska at a grain warehouse, serving with the women repairing burlap sacks. She was a Jewish inmate of Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II) since 19 January 1943, (concentration camp number 29558) deported from the ghetto in Zambrów. Despite the fact that men and women were not allowed to talk to each other, the two managed to exchange a few words every day, and they fell in love. Cyla's family had already been murdered. Bielecki promised that they both would survive the ordeal.