Jagiellonian UK and Polish Culture Institute would like to invite you for an evening with Jack Fairweather, author of the book, The Volunteer: The True History of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz at the Polish Heart Club.

About the Book:

In the summer of 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, an underground operative called Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands of people being interred at a new concentration camp on the border of the Reich. His mission was to report on Nazi crimes and raise a secret army to stage an uprising. The name of the detention centre was Auschwitz.
Drawing on exclusive family papers and recently declassified files as well as unpublished accounts from the camp’s fighters, Jack Fairweather shows how Witold attempted to save hundreds of thousands of lives.

How does an ordinary man, a farmer and father, find the moral capacity to piece together, and expose the Nazis greatest crimes while others turned away? The result is an enthralling story of resistance and heroism against the most horrific circumstances, and one man’s attempt to change the course of history. ‘The Volunteer’ is an incredible true story of survival and heroism that will add a provocative new chapter in the history of the mass murder of the Jews.

‘Impossible to believe if it were not so meticulously researched… a page-turner, a remarkable inside-view of the Holocaust, and also as a testament to all that is best in the human spirit.’ – Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down