President Bolesław Bierut, who rarely exercised his powers of clemency and usually approved previously pronounced death sentences.
The publication under discussion also positively presents Dr Władysław Dering, the pillar of secret activity in the camp hospital, who was active in the military conspiracy of Polish prisoners and was one of the first to enter the underground network of the Military Organisation Union created by Pilecki. In this case, Fairweather did not succumb to the various negative opinions and accusations that were also wrongly made against the doctor after the war.
Thus, the British author considered the opinion of Pilecki, who wrote about Dering as such, to be correct: “I state that while carrying out underground and military work (...) at the Auschwitz concentration camp, I knew Dr Władysław Dering as one of the employees of that organisation in the best possible terms. Dr Dering (...) was sworn in by me in the camp and instructed to control the situation in the local prison hospital (Krankenbau). The work was difficult, but Dr Dering did an excellent job for three years and became one of the pillars of our organisation after taking control of the situation in the hospital. However, out of necessity, he had to maintain a profile that might not appeal to particular people who were not acquainted with our work”.
After Pilecki’s escape from Auschwitz, the Polish underground continued to uphold what Pilecki was so keen to achieve, which is ensure prisoners can take up fights against the SS crew in the camp.
It is a pity Fairweather did not mention in the main text but only in the footnotes that the situation on the ground in the second half of 1944 was monitored by Second Lieuten-ant Stefan Jasieński, a.k.a. “Urban”, a welltrained soldier, a cichociemny (special-operations paratrooper of the Polish Army in exile) an intelligence officer sent from Great Britain. Before that, he fought in the September campaign, and after its collapse, he made his way to France and England through Hungary. As an officer in England, he was assigned to take a course in parachute jumping.