I’ve been a military historian for 45 years, and in that time I’ve read only a handful of books as powerful as Jack Fairweather’s The Volunteer—the story of Captain Witold Pilecki, who fought in the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1920). During the inter-war years he rebuilt his family’s property that was destroyed in World War I, and became an important leader of the community. He also was a reserve officer in the Polish 19th Infantry Division that was called up on August 26, 1939. On September 1, 1939, the Germans started barreling east toward Warsaw, and 17 days later the Soviets lumbered west toward the Vistula. Poland surrendered on September 28, 1939, and the Government went into exile in Great Britain.

At that point, most men tried to return to their families. However Fairweather suggests Pilecki held a different perspective. As much as he loved his wife and children, he also loved his country and he felt that he had an inner duty to defend it. So rather than going home, Pilecki and a friend set up the Secret Polish Army in Warsaw. The following spring, Pilecki entered discussions with the more mainstream Underground Home Army. Early that summer, the Underground began hearing that an old Polish Army barrack in the town of Oswiecim—the Germans called it Auschwitz—was being used as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners. The Underground wanted to find out what was going on there, and if possible to set up an Underground cell. Though several members suggested it to Pilecki, no one would order anyone to go on such a dangerous mission. Witold thought long and hard but ultimately concluded that he would do what was right. On September 18, 1940, he packed a few belonging and calmly waited for the German raid that the Underground knew was on its way. That started a 2 1/2 year odyssey into the hell that was Auschwitz.

Using memoirs, diaries, letters, books, interviews, newly-opened papers from the post-Polish communist archives and, most fascinatingly, Witold’s own information smuggled out of the camp to the Underground, Fairweather has described Pilecki’s astonishing journey. The starvation, torture, beatings, freezing winters, and rampant disease became routine. Slowly he built a small Underground. Their most important work was keeping meticulous records of when people entered the camp, and when and how they died. Very occasionally family members managed to pay for a Polish prisoner to be released. Whenever possible they took the information out of the camp with them and managed to get it to the Home Army. From there couriers would get it to the Polish Government-in-Exile in Britain. Initially the Government could not believe what was happening in the camp. It was far fetched. They needed corroboration. Pilecki and his Underground had to be exaggerating. And then came the Final Solution.

Pilecki and the other inmates were set to building new barracks, infirmaries, other odd buildings and crematoria. Then came the trains—first a trickle, then a stream and then a floodgate. The Underground also learned about Zyklon B—the gas used to exterminate millions of people. The Underground continued keeping records, periodically getting it to Warsaw and on to London. By now it had become clear that Palecki’s information was correct and the Government-in-Exile was trying to convince the Allies to bomb Auschwitz.

By spring of 1943, Pilecki concluded that there was little more he could do in Auschwitz. He’d barely survived typhus, and knew that he simply wouldn’t last much longer. He had the same internal discussion that he’d had before volunteering for the camp, and ultimately decided that he could do more with the Home Army then in the camp. He and two friends made their escape an on August 25 Pilecki was back with the Home Army in Warsaw. One of his first tasks was to put together what is called Witold’s Report—an extremely accurate paper providing the number of people who arrived at Auschwitz, and those who were killed.

In November 1943, Pilecki became part of the secret anti-Soviet unit of the Home Army, the NIE, for it was clear that the Soviets had their eyes on Poland. Soviets, Bolsheviks—to Pilecki communists were communists. He’s fought them before and he would do it again. And if there had been any doubts about the Soviets, the fact that they patiently waited just across the Vistula in August and September 1944, allowing the Germans to destroy what was left of Warsaw made it crystal clear. Rather than being taken by the Soviets at the end of the Warsaw Uprising, Pilecki surrendered to the Germans, and was finally liberated by the US 12th Armored division in April 1945.

As soon as he was liberated, Pilecki joined the Intelligence Division of the the Polish II Corp then based in Italy under General Anders. During his down-time, he began a book on his time in Auschwitz. Sadly, toward the end of the war, Poland came under Soviet jurisdiction. However, for the time being the Polish Forces-in-Exile carried on. Anders ordered Pilecki to return to Warsaw to report on the Soviet situation. He arrived in Warsaw in December 1945 and started to put together an intelligence network. Apparently someone informed on him in the summer of 1946. Though Anders told him to leave, Pilecki refused and continued to provide intelligence to the Forces-in-Exile until he was arrested on May 8, 1947. He was interrogated and tortured for months, but refused to give up any serious information. On March 3, 1948, the first show trial began—he was presented with a whole host of charges, and sentenced to death on May 15. Witold Pilecki was shot ten days later.

The show trial was just a part of the campaign to replace the Home Army and the Government-in-Exile with the Lublin, or Polish People’s Republic. Immediately after the fall of the communist Poland in 1990, Pilecki and hundreds of others were rehabilitated. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta and the order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish decoration. As Fairweather has shown us throughout the volume, Pilecki looked beyond himself, his family and friends, and tried to do what was needed for his country. It is a fascinating, horrifying, and ultimately an uplifting book that adds Witold Pilecki to the Polish Pantheon with Kazimierz Pulaski, Tadeusz Kosciusko and Ignacy Jan Paderewski.

This coming Monday, January 27, will be the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Only those who were there can possibly understand what happened, but it is imperative that we remember.