The underground, Fairweather writes, decided to send a volunteer to "infiltrate the camp, gain intelligence, and, if possible, raise a resistance cell and stage a breakout.

[1] Following his escape and filing of a detailed report for the Home Army and Allies on German human experiments and systematic killings in the camp, Pilecki resumed his resistance activities and, against orders, joined the Warsaw Uprising as a soldier.

[2] Pilecki's Report came to light in the 1960s, and his story has been mentioned in some works published in English (beginning with Józef Garliński's Fighting Auschwitz: The Resistance Movement in the Concentration Camp in 1975) but research on this topic was prohibited in Poland.

[10] Also in The Guardian, critic Andrew Anthony notes that the book "explores the limits of humanity" and is "an impressive feat of research, organised by a keen moral intelligence and written with the elegance and pace of a first-rate thriller.

[3] The book was also reviewed by Maria Suchcitz for New Eastern Europe who called the author's research "meticulous" and notes that "Fairweather succeeds in presenting an extremely detailed and sobering account of Pilecki’s two and a half years at Auschwitz".

Bishop Sally Dyck writing for The Christian Century magazine, noted that the book is "a study in the kind of courage it takes to resist injustice", and a helpful addition to the canon of works discussing the topic of the fate "of ethnic Poles in World War II" in the context of Auschwitz, generally dominated by the focus of Jewish Holocaust to the point that many people are not aware Auschwitz prisoners included non-Jews as well.

[20] According to Steven Minniear, a reviewer for The Journal of Military History, the book "works well" as a biography, it is "exceptional" as "an examination of what it meant to be a Pole imprisoned in Auschwitz", but "has some issues" as when it comes to presenting the wider context of Polish resistance and Allies knowledge and attitude about the camp.

[22] On the other spectrum, historian Marek Chodakiewicz, reviewing the book for the Polonia Institute, argued that, also while it keeps Pilecki's memory alive, it is also "an uncomfortable effort to assimilate the hero to the post-modern liberal narrative".