The Volunteer Quotes

“The camp had a way of stripping away pretensions to reveal a man’s true personality. “Some—slithered into a moral swamp,” Witold wrote later. “Others—chiseled themselves a character of finest crystal.”
― Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer

“So long as the prisoners could believe in the greater good, they were not defeated. Witold's men perished in many terrible ways, but they did so with a dignity that Nazism failed to destroy.”
― Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz

“The camp [Auschwitz] had already developed nicknames for those on the edge of starvation: cripples, derelicts, jewels, but the most common was "Musselmänner," or "Muslims," seemingly in reference to how they rocked back and forth in their weakness as if in prayer.”
― Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer: The True Story of the Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz

“anti-Semitism rather than reality. Most adjusted to the”
― Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer

“Then he thought of the SS man whose flat they were renovating, how he talked excitedly about his wife’s arrival, no doubt imagining her joy when she saw the new kitchen. Outside the camp this SS officer appeared to be a respectable man, but once he crossed its threshold he was a sadistic murderer. The fact that he could inhabit both worlds at once seemed most monstrous of all.”
― Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer

“Poland had been one of the most pluralistic and tolerant societies in Europe for much of its thousand-year history. However, the country that had reemerged in 1918 after 123 years of partition had struggled to forge an identity. Nationalists and church leaders called for an increasingly narrow definition of Polishness based on ethnicity and Catholicism.”
― Jack Fairweather, The Volunteer

“Witold nos recuerda que, por muy espantoso que sea el asunto, por muy difíciles que sean nuestras circunstancias personales, nunca dejamos de intentar comprender el sufrimiento ajeno. Mi deseo es que este libro nos ayude a escucharlo.”
― Jack Fairweather, El voluntario: La verdadera historia del héroe de la resistencia que se infiltró en Auschwitz

“La historia de Witold demuestra el valor que se necesita para distinguir los nuevos males de los viejos, nombrar la injusticia y no desentenderse de las desgracias ajenas.”
― Jack Fairweather, El voluntario: La verdadera historia del héroe de la resistencia que se infiltró en Auschwitz

“Una sublevación en el campo «tendría un gran eco en todo el mundo», concluía la carta. «Solo hay un pensamiento que me frena: que crearía una tremenda represión contra el país.»”
― Jack Fairweather, El voluntario: La verdadera historia del héroe de la resistencia que se infiltró en Auschwitz

“Quien mata a prisioneros de guerra nunca puede ganar la guerra —”
― Jack Fairweather, El voluntario: La verdadera historia del héroe de la resistencia que se infiltró en Auschwitz