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A review by nikkihrose
A Rebel in Auschwitz: The True Story of the Resistance Hero Who Fought the Nazis' Greatest Crime from Inside the Camp (Scholastic Focus) by Jack Fairweather
4.0
As someone who has studied different perspectives and stories about the Holocaust her entire life, and spends a good portion of her time teaching it to her students, this book came as a shock.
I had never before read a personal account of someone’s experience in Auschwitz in the beginning of the war – when Auschwitz was not yet a death camp; when it’s goal wasn’t to exterminate the Jews … I didn’t know a time like this existed. In my readings and learnings, it just seemed to appear and then exist. It wasn’t this growing entity that was built by the hands of the prisoners.
Jack Fairweather pieces together Witold Pilecki’s story as a Polish underground operative who purposefully gets captured and sent to Auschwitz with the plan to uncover the truth behind the thousands send to a new concentration camp, report on Nazi crimes, and help raise a secret army – all with the goal of staging an uprising and perhaps an outbreak. This was before anyone really knew the name Auschwitz. Before they knew what was happening there. Before what was happening there had even truly started.
Risking his life, Pilecki fought for the Polish people – to save their country from being taken from them. But along his journey, he helped save many others, too.
This book was eye-opening, and I have already lent my copy to a friend to help spread the knowledge of what happened back then.
I had never before read a personal account of someone’s experience in Auschwitz in the beginning of the war – when Auschwitz was not yet a death camp; when it’s goal wasn’t to exterminate the Jews … I didn’t know a time like this existed. In my readings and learnings, it just seemed to appear and then exist. It wasn’t this growing entity that was built by the hands of the prisoners.
Jack Fairweather pieces together Witold Pilecki’s story as a Polish underground operative who purposefully gets captured and sent to Auschwitz with the plan to uncover the truth behind the thousands send to a new concentration camp, report on Nazi crimes, and help raise a secret army – all with the goal of staging an uprising and perhaps an outbreak. This was before anyone really knew the name Auschwitz. Before they knew what was happening there. Before what was happening there had even truly started.
Risking his life, Pilecki fought for the Polish people – to save their country from being taken from them. But along his journey, he helped save many others, too.
This book was eye-opening, and I have already lent my copy to a friend to help spread the knowledge of what happened back then.