Zimmerman argues that polarized narratives, one picturing the Polish underground as anti-Semitic and murderous toward Jews and the other hand as heroically rescuing them, are oversimplified; in fact, different segments and members of the Home Army behaved in diverse ways.

He lived for a year in Poland, interviewed witnesses (Jewish survivors as well as Home Army members), and examined archives in the United Kingdom and Israel.

[5] Michael Meng, in 2016 in The American Historical Review, wrote that the book tackles a "difficult and sensitive topic" and that the author "made a significant contribution to the historiography of Polish-Jewish relations.

[7] Eva Plach, reviewing the book for the Slavic Review, also in 2016, wrote that it is "a book richly deserving of praise" and commented that Zimmerman's account discussed both examples of how, on occasion, some elements of the Polish Underground killed Jews and examples of how other elements provided aid to Jews, which "reminds us... why we cannot treat the Polish Underground as a homogeneous entity.

[11] Theodore R. Weeks, writing in 2018 in The Polish Review, called the book "a remarkably fair, objective and scholarly monograph" in a controversial topic area.

[12] Jadwiga Biskupska, writing the same year in H-Net, called the book "essential reading for modern Polish history and the Holocaust" and observed that it should be seen as a valuable contribution not only to those topics but also the literature on World War II resistance movements, particularly on Poland's Home Army.