A Rebel in Auschwitz

Description

A portrait of a remarkable man who volunteered to face the unknown in the name of truth and country. In 1940, Witold Pilecki volunteered to assume a false identity and deliberately get himself sent to the camp. Its name was Auschwitz. Over the next two and half years, and under the cruellest conditions, Pilecki worked to forge an underground army to sabotage camp facilities and foment rebellion. He pieced together the horrifying truth and realized he would have to risk his men and even his life to smuggle out evidence and warn the West, and thus stop the horror before all was lost. To do so meant attempting the impossible: an escape from Auschwitz itself.

Jack Fairweather is a former war reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan and the author of A War of Choice and The Good War. The adult edition that tells this story is titled The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero Who Infiltrated Auschwitz, which was named winner of the Costa Award and a #1 Sunday Times bestseller. Jack has served as the Daily Telegraph's Baghdad bureau chief, and as a video journalist for the Washington Post in Afghanistan. His war coverage has won a British Press Award and an Overseas Press Club award citation.

Praise for The Volunteer: "This is a story that has long deserved a robust, faithful telling, and [Fairweather] has delivered it." -- Wall Street Journal "An extraordinary story." -- The Times * "A forceful narrative with unstoppable reading momentum, Fairweather has created an insightful biography of a covert war hero and an extraordinary contribution to the history of the Holocaust." -- Booklist, starred review "Witold Pilecki is one of the great -- perhaps the greatest -- unsung heroes of the second world war... Jack Fairweather's meticulous and insightful book is likely to be the definitive version of this extraordinary life." -- Economist