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Re:A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012) by CapacitorSet on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @02:10PM (#16268014)
Pilecki was not considered a "foreign spy" for his fighting the Nazis, but for organizing an intelligence network of his own and leaking information to the West. That counts as a foreign spy in my eyes, and I'm sure someone who did the same in eg. France would also be considered as such.
Re:A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012) by mamon on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @03:27PM (#16268706)
You're probably just a troll, but for sake of the others reading this: Pilecki was the officer of Polish Home Army, which was a branch of Polish Underground State - which in turn was basically the pre-war Polish government, with its top officials being in exile in London.

So, Pilecki was by no means a spy: he was a member of legal Polish intelligence agency, reporting to legal Polish government and passing intelligence information to our official allies (Poland had signed military pacts with both France and Great Britain in 1939).

What wasn't legal was the communist government that killed him in 1948, government formed by usurpers, backed by Soviet occupants.

Re:A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012) by CapacitorSet on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @06:21PM (#16270030)
I'm not trolling. Rather, I'd think you were trolling, considering the earlier comment where you thought I was calling him a spy for having participated in the Polish resistance.

Speaking of Pilecki, of course he thought he believed he was acting in the name of a legal government, but that's not what is being discussed here. The Soviets were correctly claiming him to be a foreign spy, since he was spying for a country which is foreign to the USSR, and treated him as such.

The question of which was the "real" Polish government is not in discussion, though you're repeatedly trying to derail the conversation towards that issue; my original comment was about the fact that the Soviets killed Pilecki by virtue of him being a spy, which was also common for other countries (unlike torture). Can we agree that the Soviets correctly viewed Pilecki as a foreign spy?

Re:A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012) by mamon on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @02:33AM (#16272190)
Espionage might have been the official charge against Pilecki, yes. But Soviets used that as an excuse to kill pretty much everyone they didn’t like so I wouldn’t take that charge too seriously.

And how can they view Pilecki as a spy when he was providing intel to their British allies on their common enemy? Any reasonable country would consider Pilecki a hero, not a spy. You know, the old "Enemy of my enemy, friend of my friend" rule.

Unless of course Soviets were still respecting Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and considered Germans the allies and Brits the enemies, then prosecuting Pilecki for spying on Germans would make sense.

Re:A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012) by krzat on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @03:01PM (#16268475)
Not sure if you are trolling or what. By that logic Jews were rightfully sent to the death camps because they were enemies of the state.
Re:A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012) by CapacitorSet on Tuesday January 30, 2018 @06:22PM (#16270040)
That's quite a leap in reasoning. How did you come to that conclusion?
Re:A Man Who Volunteered for Auschwitz (2012) by krzat on Wednesday January 31, 2018 @01:37AM (#16271976)
Nazi regime -> Polish communist regime enforced by soviets

Enemy of the state -> Spy

It's OK to kill enemies of the state -> It's ok to kill spies