Jerzy Bielecki (28 March 1921 – 20 October 2011) was a Polish Catholic social worker, best known as one of the few inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp who managed to escape successfully.

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.

[1][4][5] Assigned to an Arbeitskommando at Auschwitz, Bielecki met Cyla Cybulska at a grain warehouse, serving with the women repairing burlap sacks.

[6] She was a Jewish inmate of Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II) since 19 January 1943,[1] (concentration camp number 29558) deported from the ghetto in Zambrów.

As Monika Ścisłowska reported,[15] for the Associated Press:[4] After the Soviet army rolled through Krakow in January 1945, Bielecki[16] left the city where he had been hiding from Nazi pursuit and walked 25 miles along snow-covered roads to meet Cybulska at the farmhouse.

Cybulska, not aware that the area where she had been hiding had been liberated three weeks before Kraków, gave up waiting for him, concluding that her 'Juracek' either was dead or had abandoned their plans.

— Monika Ścisłowska, AP[4]Cyla was informed that he had been killed during Operation Tempest, while he was told she had left the country and died in Sweden.

[1] It was not until May 1983, in New York, that Cybulska accidentally learned that Bielecki was alive and well when a Polish woman cleaning her family's apartment mentioned a documentary in which she had seen them recount his story.

[1] His escape from the camp with Cybulska was described in a number of documentaries and books, including Bielecki's own autobiography, Kto ratuje jedno życie... (He who saves one life...) (1990).