A Rebel in Auschwitz: The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Fought the Nazis from Inside the Camp (Scholastic Focus)

Description The Holocaust is a difficult topic for youth literature due to the horrific nature of the subject. However, Jack Fairweather, in A Rebel in Auschwitz: The True Story of the Resistance Hero Who Fought the Nazis from Inside the Camp, manages to present the difficult material in an approachable manner. Fairweather relays the true story of Witold Pilecki, a Polish resistance hero, who accepted an assignment to create a Polish underground force inside the Auschwitz concentration camp. Witold is arrested in Warsaw by the Nazis and transported to Auschwitz in August of 1940 and spends the next thirty months fighting to survive while creating a Polish resistance in the camp. Witold discovers the secrets of Auschwitz and works tirelessly to document the Nazi terror for the Polish resistance. He becomes disillusioned as the Allies fail to act to stop the butchery and escapes and returns to Warsaw. However, his efforts to document the conditions in Auschwitz helped to expose the inhumanity of the Nazis to the world. By focusing on Pilecki, Fairweather gives the reader a gripping tale of survival and the horrors of Auschwitz. The material is difficult; however, it is tempered by the technique of telling the bigger story of the Holocaust through Witold’s personal story.