The Volunteer

It's not enough to save yourself -- you have to go back for those left behind. You've probably never heard of the Polish freedom fighter Witold Pilecki, but he is one of the greatest heroes of the Second World War. As the only person who ever volunteered to be sent to Auschwitz, Pilecki led a campaign of sabotage and assassination of Nazi guards for years before making a dramatic escape, smuggling evidence of the Holocaust to the Western powers and alerting them to the atrocities of Nazi death camps. All evidence of Pilecki had been lost, until 2012, when his incredible eye-witness account was discovered in a dusty archive. This is the first full story of his amazing journey, drawing on exclusive family papers and recently declassified files as well as unpublished accounts from the camp's fighters to show how he saved hundreds of thousands of lives. This is an untold, real-life story of escape and heroism, set against the horrors of WWII and the Auschwitz, and the power of one man to change the course of history.