- This superb book won the UK's Costa Book of the Year in 2019. It was so well deserved.
- It is an utterly brilliant story of Witold Pilecki, a man of courage and integrity, who infiltrated the newly established concentration camp of Auschwitz in Poland in the summer of 1940. He volunteered for the mission in an attempt by the Polish Resistance to uncover precisely what was happening. Ugly rumours had started to emerge.
- He was imprisoned in the camp for two and a half years. I quote from the blurb on the back cover: '...Pilecki forged an underground army within Auschwitz that sabotaged facilities, assassinated Nazi officers, and gathered evidence of terrifying abuse and mass murder. But as he pieced together the horrifying Nazi plans to exterminate Europe's Jews, Pilecki realized he would have to risk his men, his life, and his family to warn the West before all was lost. To do so meant attempting the impossible - but first he would have to escape from Auschwitz itself...'
- The book is exceptionally well written and has a strong narrative drive. It's also full of photos and maps, including of the camp and its layout. The extensive research that Fairweather has brought to this project has uncovered 'perhaps the greatest unsung hero of World War II (Economist)'. I found this book impossible to put down, despite the fact that the evil it describes in excruciating detail is visceral and sickening.
- What is extraordinary as well as heartbreaking, is that the Allies were so slow to realise the immensity of what the Germans were doing to the Jews. For various and insubstantial reasons, including a measure of anti-semitism, they were reluctant to respond, even after reviewing the clear and detailed reports Pilecki had successfully leaked. The horrific reality of the Holocaust was unknown to the public virtually to the very end of the war.
- This is a must read.
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