The Only Volunteer

On September 19, 1940, Polish cavalry officer Witold Pilecki stood on a Warsaw street and waited for the German roundup he knew was coming. While thousands of Poles were seized against their will that day, Pilecki was the only person who chose to be taken. Carrying forged identity papers under the name Tomasz Serafiński, the thirty-nine-year-old father of two had volunteered for a mission no one else would accept: infiltrate Auschwitz concentration camp and report what was happening behind its walls.

Assigned prisoner number 4859, Pilecki endured starvation, forced labor, and typhus over nearly three years inside the camp. He organized an underground resistance network, smuggled out intelligence reports documenting the systematic murder of prisoners, and built a secret radio transmitter from stolen parts. His reports were among the first detailed accounts of the Holocaust to reach the Allied powers.

Pilecki could have stayed safe. He was already serving the Polish resistance from the outside. No one asked him to go. But he understood that he possessed the military training, the composure, and the opportunity that the moment demanded — and that silence was its own kind of betrayal.

Mordecai's words to Queen Esther echo across the centuries: "Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?" Every believer faces moments when God's purposes and our unique gifts converge — when we alone stand where the need is greatest. The question is never whether the cost will be high. The question is whether we will recognize the hour and step forward.