through couriers, such as the Swede named Sven Norman, or the Polish courier Napoleon Segieda, whose success in transferring these reports to the West is merely incredible.
The book also reminds us that the German Nazi Auschwitz camp was, initially a place of massacre almost exclusively for Poles. The main victims were representatives of the Polish intelligentsia and members of the Polish resistance; Poles caught during roundups, as well as a small number of Polish Jews brought here in transports along with Poles. The mass extermination of the Jewish population only began in the gas chambers of Auschwitz II-Birkenau in the spring of 1942. At the same time, Polish transports continued to be sent to the camp to the end of its existence. “The Volunteer” primarily sheds light on the early days of Auschwitz, which is relatively unknown in the West.
Moreover, thanks to Fairweather’s publication, the most recent history of Poland, presenting the resistance of Poles against two criminal totalitarian systems, it will become known to many English-speaking readers, thus showing that the term ‘Polish concentration camps’, which they encounter in their local media, is false.
Jack Fairweather wrote a biography of Witold Pilecki, in which he briefly presents his youth and life in the interwar period at the Bor-derlands, and how he found himself voluntarily in KL Auschwitz. He attempts to explain the motivation for this deed by presenting what kind of man Witold Pilecki was. The book also contains information on the events that transpired upon his escape from the camp, including the story of his involvement in the Warsaw Uprising and opposition to Communism after the war, for which he ultimately paid with his life. He was sentenced to death during the Stalinist terror in Poland and shot in the Mokotow prison in Warsaw on 25 May 1948.
However, the British writer’s publication mainly tells of a fragment of Witold Pilecki’s life as an Auschwitz prisoner, who reported on Nazi crimes. His objective, as the author stresses, was also to convince the Allies to bomb the camp. The tool intended to accomplish this goal was ‘Witold’s Reports passed on from KL Auschwitz over a period of almost three years, in which he reported on the transformation of the concentration camp intended for the Polish elite into a centre for the mass extermination of Jews, transported to their death from virtually the entire Europe.
The reports by Cavalry Captain Pilecki were certainly not the only source of information on the crimes committed in KL Auschwitz.