Summary of Captain Witold Pilecki's The Auschwitz Volunteer

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Sample Book Insights:

#1 Witold Pilecki’s Report is a powerful document. It is powerful not because of its cadences of prose or striking imagery, but because it illuminates the brutally perverted world of Auschwitz in a way that only someone who has firsthand experience of it could do.

#2 The Report is powerful, because it highlights an aspect of Auschwitz that is less well known outside Poland and the world of concentration camp survivors and historians. While most people know about the Holocaust and the abomination of the gas chambers, fewer know that in the first stage of the camp’s existence, most of its victims were Christian Poles.

#3 The Report of the Camp Inspector is a testament to the human qualities of some of the inmates in the camp, despite the terrible circumstances they were in. It is a reminder that even in the midst of so much cruelty and degradation, there were those who held to the basic virtues of honesty, compassion, and courage.

#4 The Report by Pilecki was extremely critical of the Home Army commanders and other Allied leaders for not doing anything about Auschwitz. He felt that they were more or less indifferent to the suffering in the camp.