WW2 Trivia Archive

Other intelligence about Auschwitz came from escapees (who initially entered involuntarily), from people released by administrative decision, and from external observation. Pilecki specifically approached his Polish resistance superiors and asked for permission to use the mass arrest taking place in Warsaw on September 19, 1940 as a vehicle to enter the camp. He entered as prisoner 4859. He organized a resistance network inside that included several hundred prisoners in a five-man cell structure. He spent nearly three years inside before escaping in April 1943. He was executed by Communist Poland in May 1948 for espionage.

Doss worked through the night of May 4-5, 1945, after his unit was driven from the top of the escarpment, crawling alone to find wounded men and lowering them with a rope system off the 400-foot cliff. His Medal of Honor citation credits him with rescuing 75 men; Doss himself believed it was closer to 50. His unit had previously attempted to have him discharged on psychiatric grounds and court-martialed for refusing to train on his Sabbath. His captain, Jack Glover, who had led those efforts, later said Doss was the bravest man he had ever known and that Doss had saved his own life.

The 442nd, composed of Japanese American soldiers (many from families held in American internment camps), attacked uphill through dense forested terrain for eight days in October 1944 against heavily fortified German positions. The ratio of 800 casualties to 211 rescued men reflected the brutal mathematics of the terrain and the German defensive preparation. The 442nd RCT became the most decorated unit of its size and length of service in American military history: 9,486 Purple Hearts, 21 Medals of Honor (19 upgraded from lower citations in 2000 after a review found racial bias in original awards), and over 4,000 Bronze Stars.

Wallenberg's Schutzpass system and "safe houses" sheltered an estimated 100,000 Hungarian Jews from deportation to Auschwitz in 1944. He personally boarded cattle cars at rail yards to distribute protective papers, pulled people off trains, and ran alongside death marches to extract people with Swedish papers. After Soviet forces entered Budapest, he sought a meeting with the Soviet commander regarding humanitarian matters. He was never seen as a free man again. The Soviet government provided conflicting accounts for decades. Most historians believe he was executed, likely in 1947, though some evidence suggests he may have survived longer in Soviet custody. Sweden declared him legally dead in 2016, 71 years after his arrest.

Winton organized eight trains from Prague to London Liverpool Street station between March and August 1939, moving 669 mostly Jewish children out of Czechoslovakia. A ninth train carrying 250 children was scheduled for September 1, 1939 — the day Germany invaded Poland. It never left the station; most of those children were later killed. Winton told no one, including his wife Grete, about what he had done for 50 years. His wife found the leather scrapbook of names and transport manifests in 1988 while clearing the attic. Winton was knighted in 2003 and lived to age 106.