The Volunteer, by Jack Fairweather

This story is almost too crazy-sounding for real life.  After the Nazi invasion of Poland, Witold Pilecki, a Polish military officer turned resistance fighter, volunteered to allow himself to be arrested so that the Nazis would send him to Auschwitz.  Jack Fairweather tells Pilecki's story in The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz.

Taking a false identity, Pilecki was taken to Auschwitz, along with other political prisoners.  At first, ethnic Poles, resistance fighters, and other political prisoners populated the camp.  Although it was not yet a death camp, conditions were terrible and prisoners were treated brutally.  Pilecki immediately began building a resistance network within the camp, seeking ways to bring the camp down and to get messages about the camp to the outside world.

During his stay at Auschwitz, the Nazis began experimenting with more efficient ways to kill prisoners.  They developed the gas chambers and were constantly tweaking the methods of killing and disposing of the bodies.  Auschwitz became less a camp for political prisoners and more and more a death camp for the extermination of the Jews.

Pilecki did manage to send reports through various means, but the stories that he and others were telling about Auschwitz and the Nazi's extermination plans in general were too unbelievable.  It took a while for other nations' leaders to fully grasp that the numbers reporting the killing of the Jews were not exaggerated.  The scope and scale of the Final Solution seemed beyond belief.

The Volunteer gathers first-hand accounts and presents a vivid history of Auschwitz, recording Pilecki's remarkable brilliance and bravery, as well as the hardships he suffered.  For decades, his story went untold.  After the Nazis lost the war, the Soviets took over.  Resistance fighters like Pilecki were no happier with the Soviets' harsh rule than they were with the Nazis, so he continued to fight, and his story was silenced.  Only after the fall of the USSR did his story come out.

I love the way Fairweather personalizes Pilecki's story, bringing it to life from a wide array of original source materials.  Should my home country ever be invaded, I can only hope that many would have the guts and resourcefulness demonstrated by Witold Pilecki.


Thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!