lacked sufficient transport capabilities, supplies, and the shelter that would be required for the rescued inmates. The Soviet Red Army, despite being within attacking distance of the camp, showed no interest in a joint effort with the Home Army and the ZOW to free it. Shortly after rejoining the resistance, Pilecki became a member of the Kedyw sabotage unit, using the pseudonym Roman Jezierski. He also joined a secret anti-communist organization, NIE. On 19 February 1944 he was promoted to cavalry captain (rotmistrz). Until becoming involved in the Warsaw Uprising, Pilecki continued coordinating ZOW and Home Army activities and providing ZOW with what limited support he could. In Auschwitz, Pilecki had met the author Igor Newerly, whose Jewish wife, Barbara, was hiding in Warsaw. The Newerlys had been working with Janusz Korczak to try to save Jewish lives. Pilecki gave Barbara Newerly money from the Polish resistance, which she passed on to several Jewish families whom she and her husband protected. He also gave her money to pay off her own szmalcownik, or blackmailer, who said he was Jewish and threatened to report her to the Gestapo. The blackmailer disappeared, with Jack Fairweather concluding that "it is likely that Witold arranged for his execution". Warsaw Uprising When the Warsaw Uprising broke out on 1 August 1944, Pilecki volunteered for service with of Kedyw's Chrobry II Battalion. Initially, he served as a common soldier in the northern city centre, without revealing his rank to his superiors. After many officers were killed in the early days of the uprising, Pilecki revealed his true identity and accepted command of the 1st "Warszawianka" Company deployed in Warsaw's Śródmieście (downtown) district. After the fall of the uprising, which ended on 2 October that year, he was captured and taken prisoner by the Germans. He was sent to Oflag VII-A, a prison-of-war camp for Polish officers located north of Murnau, Bavaria, where he remained until the prisoners were liberated on 29 April 1945. After the war In July 1945 Pilecki joined the military intelligence division of the Polish II Corps under Lieutenant General Władysław Anders in Ancona, Italy. In October 1945, as relations between the government-in-exile and the Soviet-backed regime of Boleslaw Bierut kept deteriorating, Pilecki was ordered by Anders and his intelligence chief, Lieutenant Colonel Stanisław Kijak, to return to Poland and report on the prevailing military and political situation under Soviet occupation. By December