Hello, and thank you for listening to The History of World War II podcast.

Episode 342 interview with Jack Fairweather about his book, A Rebel in Auschwitz.

Jack Fairweather is a former war reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan and the author of A War

of Choice and the Good War. Today's discussion is about Vitold Piletsky, a Polish resistance

fighter who purposefully allowed himself to be arrested to get into Auschwitz.

So Mr. Fairweather, thank you very much for being with us today.

My pleasure.

So this was an absolutely incredible story. I know you've been talking about it for a while

about Vitold Piletsky, but correct me if I'm wrong, this wasn't actually widely known

in the Western world until recently.

It's one of the incredible things about Piletsky's story. As soon as you hear what he did,

the man who volunteered for a mission to Auschwitz, you immediately think, well, I don't

know about that story, because anyone not know about something so extraordinary.

The thing is that Piletsky's record was lost, hidden away, obscured, after the war.

As you say, it wasn't until 2012 that his port about his activities in the camp was finally

translated into English and that was how Andy I came across him.

And I just had that idea, that man who volunteered for Auschwitz read this report and I thought,

wow, this is a story that simply has to be told more widely.

Right. And this is going to sound morbidly weird, but I guess for people like me who are

World War II buffs, there are, I guess there is new information coming out all the time

for different reasons. And this is certainly one of those examples.

And I think people have to remember that the end of World War II was obviously followed

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