Jack Fairweather, THE VOLUNTEER
[0:08]Hi, I'm Zibi Owens, and you're listening to the web-e-nominated podcast.
[0:12]Moms don't have time to read books.
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[0:31]I'm excited to be here today with Jack Fairweather, who is a former war reporter.
[0:35]He has covered Iraq, Afghanistan, and more.
[0:38]He is the author of a war of choice and the good war.
[0:41]His war coverage for the Daily Telegraph in the Washington Post earned him a British press award
[0:46]and an overseas press club citation.
[0:49]His most recent book is The Volunteer, One Man and Underground Army in the Secret Mission to
[0:54]destroy Auschwitz. He's a graduate of Oxford University and currently lives in Vermont with his wife
[1:00]and three daughters. Welcome to Jack. Hi, Zibi. Hi.
[1:04]Thanks for coming on Moms. Don't have time to read books.
[1:06]Well, thanks for having me.
[1:07]I'm particularly excited because this is definitely a long book and so interesting.
[1:13]So I'm very excited to get like the inside scoop from you before, you know, everyone delves into
[1:19]itself. Well, I'm thrilled to share. I'm thrilled to share.
[1:21]Although I did realize that about a quarter of the book is footnotes at the end.
[1:25]So it's misleading how thick it is.
[1:27]Yes indeed, it's a whole extra book inside.
[1:32]So can you please tell listeners what the volunteers about and what inspired you to write it?
[1:37]So the volunteer is this extraordinary story about a Polish underground operative who in 1940
[1:46]took on a mission to infiltrate Auschwitz, raise a resistant cell inside the camp
[1:52]and start reporting on Nazi crimes. And incredibly, he succeeded in doing those things,
[2:01]sending out messages to reach the allies that were the first to inform the world about what was
[2:05]happening in Auschwitz. And perhaps even more amazing is the fact that you haven't, you know,
[2:12]do listener perhaps heard of his story before now because what happened at the end of the story to
[2:18]cut forwards a little bit is that he fought against the communist regime that was established
[2:24]after the Second World War was captured and executed and all trace of his wartime heroics in
[2:30]Auschwitz obliterated by the communist regime. They did not want anyone to know about
[2:35]Pilecki's story or that this great resistance fighter could be an inspiration to people in
[2:42]Poland or beyond. And it wasn't until the fall of the Iron Curtain and in the 1990s that the
[2:50]archives were opened up and finally, Pilecki's story could start to be rediscovered in Poland
[2:58]and and beyond. And so I was completely gobsmacked when I heard about Pilecki's story and I
[3:05]hadn't heard of it before. But I learned why I felt a really strong sense that there had been a
[3:12]historical injustice and that, you know, we needed to know more about Pilecki and he's a Pilecki
[3:19]in our lives especially at this time. Yeah, so that was the inspiration for the research.
[3:25]And how did you find out about him? You heard through a friend that you had been reporting
[3:29]with in somewhere? Yeah, so I've been a war reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan and I was just
[3:34]transitioning out of the Middle East just beginning a family and in fact when I met up with
[3:40]the fellow war reporter also mulling over life outside war zones. He had just been to Auschwitz
[3:49]and had come across the story of a camp resistance that was new to him. It was completely
[3:54]mind-blowing to me because I think, you know, when we most people think about Auschwitz they think
[3:59]what the camp became and it's sort of an idea a place for the collection of mass murder of Europe's
[4:05]Jews and they don't realize that there was this years in which the camp played a different role
[4:12]slowly through a series of terrible experiments led to the final solution. But I couldn't believe
[4:19]that there could be resistance in Auschwitz and that got my antennas up a year later in 2012,
[4:27]one of Pletzky's reports was finally translated into English and I sort of read that with, you know,
[4:36]utterly consumed my attention off and he writes in this war and an incredible way. He also leaves
[4:46]lots of questions unanswered. Like what happened to the intelligence? He was rescued. His life
[4:51]smelled a lot of the camp. So that then led me into the research.
[4:57]So take me through how you did this research. You went from being literally like on the front lines
[5:03]and being a victim of suicide bombing attempt and just like in it you were just on the ground to
[5:09]now where where where did you find out this? Are you in NASA and Lee in libraries or online sitting
[5:14]at your desk? Like paint the picture of how it went from you and like the military garb to,
[5:21]you know, Google I guess. So I what did I made my first reporting trip to Poland in January 2016
[5:30]and the first person that I knew I had to see was Pletzky's son. So he had two kids before he went
[5:38]into the camp both who were alive today and I knew I had to sort of on some level seek their
[5:44]permission to write about their dad. So I was I had found a couple of researchers one of whom
[5:51]happened to live in the same block as as the son Andre Pletzky. I told her since she told me that
[5:56]I told her right your heart your heart is and they set me up with this meeting that I was
[6:01]hugely nervous about you know, it's been a lot of sort of pre-gaming and planning as to how it
[6:08]would go as it turned out it was completely unnecessary because Andre was so interested, engaged
[6:16]and amazed that his dad's story had you know could attract outside interest you know we bonded
[6:25]straight away and he warned me though I'm not sure what else you'll be able to find on my dad
[6:32]away you should start looking and so I sort of looked at him and said, Andre I'm going to
[6:37]and start with you because everything that you know about your dad is it's kind of new and in some
[6:46]ways any detail you can give me about what would motivate Pletzky to do such an incredible
[6:53]mission I need and so that began the first of hours of conversations with Andre and
[7:03]he just to give you a sort of flavour of how incredibly engaged he was he you know took us to
[7:11]the home in an outside wall saw where he had sheltered with his mum and where Pletzky after the
[7:17]wall would come and visit them I wanted to follow in Pletzky's footsteps as much as possible so
[7:24]that included things like recreating his escape from the camp and Andre it was really one of the
[7:31]most lovely and sort of of the research he followed us as we tried to sort of follow the 100 miles
[7:38]of his escape route we were my researchers and I leaving you know traveling at night sleeping
[7:44]rough as Pletzky was Andre was not he's in his late 80s but he would stay in hotels nearby and
[7:52]sort of meet us with the cup of tea and ask us how the journey was going and one night we all
[7:59]stayed together in this Benedictine monastery where Pletzky he actually slightly broke the
[8:08]rule of the research but he slept in a pile of leads nearby but in that monastery he was given
[8:14]sucker the priest there gave him food and supplies and what was one of the lovely things about
[8:21]taking this approach was that as we followed his escape route we know a couple of the towns where
[8:27]he stayed and that's about it we would meet families who had themselves shelters Pletzky and
[8:36]the kids who being the home when Pletzky and his two fellow scapers came in you know would show up
[8:43]but they remembered those scenes and there was just this lovely mirror in some ways that went on
[8:50]because you know we would you know walk up and they would take us in and give us tea and offer us
[8:56]a little bit of shelter and this sort of support and genuineness and sort of passion to the history
[9:04]felt you know felt like a echo of what Pletzky himself experienced and actually writes briefly about
[9:11]on his as he traveled across Poland but even though this was in 1943 at the height of the sort of
[9:19]Nazi racial experiment in Poland when Nazis were trying to divide Poles between themselves
[9:26]were trying to exterminate the Jews which were trying to you know round up people for forced labor
[9:31]people were paid to rat on each other even in that climate Pletzky found you know this incredible
[9:38]spirit of warmth and generosity that allowed him to get to the safe house and allowed him to
[9:44]write you know one of his reports about what was happening in the camp so that was a lot of
[9:50]long answer to your question but I fact you know Fusible was meeting the family
[9:54]Andrey and Zwaffe his sister and then it was trying to retrace his
[10:00]is footsteps and, you know, wherever possible,
[10:02]combining the two.
[10:04]So, you know, incredibly,
[10:07]there were well over a dozen people
[10:10]who had known Piletsky of Fort with Piletsky
[10:12]who was still alive when I began research in 2016.
[10:16]And most of them had not shared their stories before.
[10:19]It would be dangerous thing to do in the communist time.
[10:22]And there is that sort of reticence
[10:25]that I think we all know about our grandparents' generation,
[10:28]about talking about their exploits of the past.
[10:32]So, you know, they opened up to me.
[10:35]They opened up when I took them to the places
[10:38]where they had been with Piletsky and on that first reporting trip,
[10:42]I went to the apartments where Piletsky began his mission.
[10:46]This was where, in September 1940,
[10:49]early on in the council existence,
[10:50]he had sat waiting to be captured in a German roundup
[10:54]that he had been informed would be sent to Auschwitz.
[10:58]And the three-year-old boy who had been in the apartment
[11:02]when he was captured and that three-year-old boy
[11:05]now a six-year-old man who I brought back to that apartment.
[11:08]The first time he'd gone back in 80 years
[11:11]because the communists had taken it over
[11:13]at the end of the war and some rights
[11:15]of the family had, you know, been lost.
[11:18]So, we were talking back and he, you know,
[11:22]these memories came back to him as we were in the room.
[11:25]One, I just love so much
[11:27]because I think it really speaks to a special quality of Piletsky.
[11:31]But as the Germans were barging up the stairs,
[11:33]they could have gun shots and shouts
[11:35]and, you know, seconds before he was to be arrested.
[11:39]Piletsky noticed that the boys Teddy Bear
[11:41]had fallen on the floor and he reached up
[11:43]and handed it to him as the door was thrown open.
[11:48]And that really spoke to me about Piletsky's ability
[11:51]to reach out to others in moments of great stress.
[11:56]And that really became such a power of his
[12:00]in the camp time and again, you know,
[12:02]when you would think he would be thinking about
[12:05]his own survival and himself.
[12:06]He was doing, looking pretty opposite.
[12:08]He was thinking about thinking about others.
[12:11]So I was curious what you think made Piletsky
[12:14]the type of person who would do this, right?
[12:17]I guess you can be born the type of person
[12:18]to pick up a Teddy Bear,
[12:19]but to volunteer to go into Auschwitz,
[12:22]to try to get the message out to the whole world.
[12:25]You paint him as a very average Joe type of guy.
[12:28]Like he meets his wife, painting scenery at the local,
[12:31]you know, stage, he's just this guy who runs this huge,
[12:34]well, it sounded kind of like a plantation,
[12:35]but this giant thing that he inherits from his family.
[12:38]And the next thing you know,
[12:39]he's joining this resistance and trying to save the world.
[12:42]So I'm just wondering, maybe as a parent myself,
[12:46]like how do you think you instill values like this
[12:48]in your children or how do you think he got them?
[12:51]That's a great question.
[12:52]And one I've also thought about.
[12:54]In some ways, it was one of the ways in which I first started
[12:59]to really approach Piletsky's character.
[13:01]Because when you think about what he did,
[13:04]you sort of reach for these great epithets and ideas
[13:07]like heroism and bravery and patriotism,
[13:11]which I always found a little bit distancing
[13:13]or sort of hard to really see the man.
[13:15]And that's really what I wanted to get at.
[13:18]And it was actually through Andre's stories
[13:20]about Piletsky as a bad that I began to identify with him,
[13:26]not not least because we were the same age
[13:29]when Piletsky began his mission to become,
[13:31]as when I began my research and we had two kids
[13:34]at the time, at least I did at the time.
[13:37]And I was listening to Andre talk about Piletsky's parenting
[13:41]techniques, which he was definitely in that sort of school
[13:46]of housepox style of parenting.
[13:48]He really, he would chuck Andre into the pond and say,
[13:51]it gets very, he would put Andre onto a big horse
[13:56]and say, get riding.
[13:58]And his idea in some ways was for Andre
[14:01]to become a man of perhaps a military man,
[14:04]a man who sort of loved some of the ceremonial aspects
[14:09]of military life as he did.
[14:13]And it turned out that Andre was totally not
[14:16]into sort of things at all.
[14:18]He was into the radio.
[14:21]He was looking to the future.
[14:22]In fact, he went on to become an engineer
[14:25]and had actually no interest in sort of
[14:27]pageantry, horse ride, people, all of these things.
[14:30]Because I didn't stop Piletsky trying to sort of
[14:33]engage with him on the subject matter.
[14:35]And so this sort of sort of sweet and funny sort of push
[14:40]and pull began.
[14:41]But I totally recognized, of course,
[14:42]from raising my own daughters that you have to catch yourself
[14:47]every once in a while and say, hang on a minute,
[14:50]am I pushing on them?
[14:52]Well, are they really getting out of this?
[14:54]What I felt that came through from Andre's stories,
[14:59]even though they were slightly talking about them
[15:04]in a slightly sort of negative way, or that this sort of
[15:08]critiquing his approach, was, of course,
[15:11]that Piletsky was just so engaged with their childhood.
[15:14]And that really, really different to so many men of that era.
[15:19]I mean, his wife was a schoolteacher.
[15:21]And so he would ride them into the village,
[15:27]the mile into the village, and then pick them up.
[15:29]And then when Maria had to work late,
[15:32]he would take them home.
[15:34]And they'd be putting on fancy dress shows.
[15:37]And they would be writing little poems that they would perform.
[15:41]And Maria came home.
[15:43]He was just always engaged with them.
[15:47]It was quite opening for me, because it's very easy to be not engaged.
[15:56]That was a real lesson for me, and how to be a best
[15:59]apparent was, you know, albeit, you know,
[16:02]sometimes you make some mistakes.
[16:05]And what do you think you're teaching your kids?
[16:10]But still, that act of reaching out and engaging
[16:13]is really what counts.
[16:14]And that's, of course, why, you know, to hear Andre and Zofia
[16:17]talk about their dads, you know, it's just, it's so,
[16:20]it's so moving to hear them.
[16:23]So while you were doing all your research,
[16:26]I mean, I feel like there has been a lot written and filmed
[16:29]about Auschwitz.
[16:30]Was there anything that you discovered aside
[16:33]from this whole underground resistance movement
[16:35]about what was going on at the camp that you really found surprised?
[16:39]Let me just add one final thing, just once,
[16:41]to see your question.
[16:43]That engagement that he had with his kids,
[16:46]that is really, in some ways, the secret
[16:49]of how he went about making the underground in Auschwitz,
[16:54]you know, against all the odds, against everyone's expectations.
[16:58]It was this ability to engage, engage with others.
[17:03]And, you know, people who knew him, who had been recruited
[17:07]by him, described that they felt from him
[17:12]the sense of trust.
[17:14]And, you know, I think that was a very powerful force
[17:19]in the camp when everyone was being, you know,
[17:23]dehumanized and stripped of their dignity.
[17:25]And I think it's a powerful message for people today, you know,
[17:30]to realize just how important it is to trust people around you.
[17:37]And that's what, you know,
[17:38]Pulaski throwing Andre into the pond
[17:41]or popping onto a horse was doing, he was trusting them.
[17:45]And in the camp, that's what he did.
[17:47]He would reach out to these broken and starving
[17:52]and demoralized prisoners and trust them
[17:56]with the secret of the underground,
[17:57]trust them with the secret of his own life.
[18:00]Because, of course, they could have just turned around at any moment
[18:02]and shopped him to the local SS officer for a loaf of bread
[18:06]or incredibly none ever did.
[18:10]Because what he showed them through the act of trust
[18:13]was something greater than themselves could endure in the camp.
[18:17]And to take that to your next question,
[18:20]and I'm going to think that, for me, was so stunning, you know,
[18:23]this place of victimhood, of suffering,
[18:28]that it could also be a place for inspiration, sharing,
[18:34]cooperation seemed so surprising to me.
[18:37]And, you know, I confess that prior to coming across Pulaski's story,
[18:43]I hadn't sort of read a great amount about Auschwitz
[18:46]or the Holocaust.
[18:47]I knew it, of course, and everyone does.
[18:49]But I just struggled in a way to come to terms with what the camp was.
[18:54]I mean, how do you get your head around, you know, a million people dying them?
[18:58]And Pulaski's story was such sort of blaze of light
[19:02]through that dark time through the camp.
[19:05]He really drew me along with him throughout the research.
[19:09]And I think that's what I would say to your listeners
[19:14]is that he really is such a startling new perspective
[19:18]on Auschwitz.
[19:19]You know, he shows that resistance is possible even in the darkest of times.
[19:28]And for me, that was really inspiring.
[19:31]And I hope that people can take away some sort of encouragement
[19:36]in our own struggles to try and follow in Pulaski's example.
[19:40]So how did you go back and forth?
[19:43]And this extends really to your career as a war reporter as well.
[19:46]How do you sort of toggle between the intensity of what you're covering
[19:51]and then your own life?
[19:53]And like, how do you put those feelings aside?
[19:56]Let's say you're on Pulaski's journey to Auschwitz one day.
[20:00]or you're recreating the whole thing.
[20:01]And then you have to flip a switch
[20:04]and sort of go back to not Auschwitz land.
[20:07]I'm not saying that very well, but how do you do that?
[20:09]Do you even know how you do that?
[20:11]Or it just, you've always done that?
[20:13]Well, the truth is, I don't do it very well.
[20:16]And there's no worth in, you know, as bookwriters,
[20:20]we understand that it's, you know,
[20:22]really engaging, incredible tasks,
[20:26]but it's also incredible that you don't stop ever
[20:29]thinking through on some level, the material
[20:33]and the story.
[20:34]And, you know, my eye have struggled
[20:38]that you can't, especially, you know,
[20:40]for a story as consuming as Auschwitz.
[20:44]And with someone as incredible as Paleski,
[20:47]I really struggled to sort of draw lines in my own life.
[20:53]You know, I live for the last two years
[20:55]in Charlotte for months, but, you know,
[20:58]as I sometimes joke, I've been in 1940s Poland
[21:02]in actual fact.
[21:05]And there was actually a little bit of a surprise.
[21:07]This winter, this is the first draft.
[21:09]It's an off the first draft to suddenly look around me.
[21:13]It's how waste and like get to take the kids skiing
[21:17]and see the lovely, you know, the joys of the Vermont landscape.
[21:22]So, yes, unfortunately, I'm not the person to turn
[21:25]and see if I advise faculty to switch on and off.
[21:29]You know, the best thing is, you know,
[21:31]through that, you know, Purski's example
[21:34]of engaging with his kids and, you know,
[21:37]and just allowing yourself to focus on them.
[21:40]So that's my advice, but I suspect my wife
[21:44]may have a different take on that.
[21:46]She's been like, she's such an amazing support.
[21:50]And I went back to Poland two weeks ago,
[21:55]to give my, the talk I give about the book,
[21:59]to the family and the friends and everyone
[22:02]who's supported the book.
[22:04]And I took my two oldest daughters with me.
[22:06]And it was just a lovely coming together
[22:10]of my two parallel lives as it were.
[22:13]And to see Amalie, you know, get to meet Andre and shake hands
[22:18]and go around to his house for Tien cake.
[22:21]And to meet some of the up prizes
[22:24]before in the water uprising,
[22:25]for them to sort of take my daughters around the streets
[22:28]where they fought and have them, you know,
[22:31]hear those stories with others.
[22:34]It was really lovely.
[22:35]So maybe I think during the book,
[22:38]maybe during the book rising, there's no solution.
[22:40]But at the end, make sure you bring the pieces together again.
[22:47]So what would you like to see happen
[22:49]to Pilets give sort of place in history?
[22:51]Or what would you like to see happen to a story?
[22:53]Like, I'm sure this must be a movie at some point, right?
[22:57]I mean, I can already like see the whole thing
[22:59]and I can't wait to sort of go see it.
[23:01]But like, what would you like people to know
[23:04]that everyone now has to know about this man?
[23:07]I think that, you know, Pilets is clearly to my minds.
[23:11]I hope to everyone who reads the book,
[23:13]one of the great heroes of World War II.
[23:16]And, you know, when you think about those heroes,
[23:19]people like Shindler and Samoan Staffenburg
[23:23]who tried to assassinate Hitler, you know,
[23:26]his name should be a household name.
[23:29]Because he offers something, you know,
[23:33]an extraordinary new slant on what heroism is in World War II.
[23:39]And, you know, he fought against the Nazis
[23:43]from the very beginning with all of his passion,
[23:47]all of his soul and make credible sacrifices
[23:51]to do so.
[23:53]And he managed to do something purely amazing in Auschwitz.
[23:59]He step by step, identified the final solution
[24:04]as emerged before him.
[24:05]He put names on unprecedented evil
[24:10]that no one else had before.
[24:12]And I think in that act of witnessing that act
[24:17]of naming that something really important for us
[24:21]nowadays to see, like, we're surrounded by, you know,
[24:25]atrocities and evil, you know,
[24:27]how do we engage with them?
[24:29]How do we find ways to talk about these actions,
[24:34]you know, just think about the migrant crisis,
[24:36]the terrible internment of separation of families
[24:40]down on the Mexican border?
[24:41]Like, how do we talk about that in a way
[24:44]that engages with the past,
[24:47]but, you know, recognizes that this is something new
[24:51]that we should all be getting up in arms about.
[24:54]There are palletsis today out there
[24:57]who are trying to tell their stories,
[25:00]trying to raise awareness, trying to get us to engage.
[25:03]And, you know, we need to learn from palletsis
[25:06]both how he was this incredible witness,
[25:09]but also how we didn't listen to him at the time
[25:12]and how we neglected his legacy for these decades.
[25:17]So, you know, let palletsis be an emblem for us
[25:21]of, like, what it takes to engage with the world around us.
[25:25]It's darker sides and how you emerge from it
[25:27]with your courage and dignity intact
[25:30]and, you know, the very profound message
[25:32]that we need to reach out and share with others
[25:35]and get the world up in arms in the face of grace.
[25:38]I love that.
[25:39]So, are you working on another book now
[25:40]that this one is being launched into the world?
[25:43]Do you have another topic you're tackling right now?
[25:45]That's a great question.
[25:46]Right now, we are opening it
[25:48]and in the National Exhibition,
[25:50]about palletsis, the immune, a couple of Polish institutes
[25:54]that will hopefully be a way to share some of the research,
[25:57]the way into the book and share,
[25:59]but that's the story in a different way.
[26:01]So, I'm really excited about that.
[26:03]So, I'm being in Berlin next month
[26:05]with Angler Merkel and all host of dignitaries.
[26:08]And I hope it gets, you know, it gets people
[26:11]to sort of see and experience palletsis story
[26:15]in a new way.
[26:16]Excellent.
[26:17]And do you have any advice to aspiring authors,
[26:20]people who might want to tackle something in history,
[26:22]the way you did and really bring it to life
[26:24]and of the vid way, the way you did in your book?
[26:27]I would say, you know, simply it's, you know,
[26:31]such a wonderful opportunity to engage with the past
[26:36]and I loved every minute of the research,
[26:40]conjuring in the first into it
[26:42]and trying to experience it as much of it
[26:45]as I could so that would be,
[26:47]if you can find a story that, you know,
[26:50]just gives you half an inkling that there may be more there,
[26:54]whether it's a family story,
[26:56]whether it's a history book, just, you know, to go for it.
[26:59]And I'm sorry that the research came to an end,
[27:02]which I think is so real, you know,
[27:05]testament to, you know, how, you know,
[27:07]what a great experience it can be to engage with the past.
[27:10]Well, thank you for sharing your story
[27:12]and your passion for bringing this piece of history to light
[27:16]which will really benefit everybody.
[27:18]So thank you for being of service
[27:19]and in all of your research as well.
[27:21]All right, I was very, thank you for your great questions
[27:23]and questions to speak.
[27:24]No problem, of course.
[27:26]Oh, thanks for taking the time, bye-bye.
[27:27]Bye for now.
[27:28]Thanks again to today's sponsor of Momstone,
[27:31]have time to read books,
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[27:37]Thanks for listening to Momstone,
[27:38]have time to read books.
[27:39]You can follow me on Instagram
[27:41]at Momstone, have time to read books.
[27:43]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[27:46]for the Sound Editing.
[27:47]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[27:49]for providing this fantastic intro and now trim music.
[27:52]Thanks for listening.
[27:53]You could always email me at zibi at zibiowens.com.