https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/feb/17/the-volunteer-by-jack-fairweather-review-witold-pilecki-auschwitz

Humanity’s limits are laid bare in the gripping story of a Polish soldier who chronicled Hitler’s genocide from within

This year will mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the second world war, probably the most revisited period of history in history. And yet this looming event – and in particular the genocide at its heart – continues to yield revelatory stories and inspire exceptional writing.

Four years ago, Philippe Sands’s East West Street traced the roots of modern human rights law back to two Jews who emerged from the “bloodlands”, to use the historian Timothy Snyder’s term, of Lviv in what was Poland and is now Ukraine. If that extraordinary book grappled with the meaning of law in the depths of depravity, then Jack Fairweather’s The Volunteer, the deserved winner of the Costa book award, explores the limits of humanity in the same dreadful context.