The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery [Hardcover]

Earthshaking. A book which I hope will be widely read.A shining example of heroism that transcends religion, race and time???This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the Holocaust.A real contribution to our understanding of the history of Poland under Nazi occupation.An Allied hero who deserved to be remembered and celebrated.This remarkable book...may shock but will surely enlighten. Here is a portion of the Auschwitz story that needed to be told.One man volunteered for Auschwitz, and now we have his story. . . Pilecki???s report on Auschwitz, unpublishable for decades in Communist Poland and now translated into English under the title The Auschwitz Volunteer, is a historical document of the greatest importance.A historical document of the greatest importance.Extraordinary.September 1940. Polish Army officer Witold Pilecki deliberately walked into a Nazi German street round-up in Warsaw and became Auschwitz Prisoner No. 4859. He had volunteered for a secret undercover mission: smuggle out intelligence about the new German concentration camp, and build a resistance organization among prisoners. Pilecki???s clandestine intelligence, received by the Allies in 1941, was among earliest. He escaped in 1943 after accomplishing his mission. Dramatic eyewitness report, written in 1945 for Pilecki???s Polish Army superiors, published in English for first time.In 1940, the Polish Underground wanted to know what was happening inside the recently opened Auschwitz concentration camp. Polish army officer Witold Pilecki volunteered to be arrested by the Germans and reported from inside the camp. His intelligence reports, smuggled out in 1941, were among the first eyewitness accounts of Auschwitz atrocities: the extermination of Soviet POWs, its function as a camp for Polish political prisoners, and the ???final solution??? for Jews. Pilecki received brutal treatment until he escaped in April 1943; soon after, he wrote a brief report. This book is the first English tlÓ+