Undercover Report from Auschwitz Wins 2012 Benjamin Franklin Award

LOS ANGELES - May 30, 2013 - PRLog -- The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, by Captain Witold Pilecki, translated by Jarek Garlinski (Aquila Polonica Publishing), won a Silver 2012 Benjamin Franklin Award for Autobiography/Memoirs in a ceremony held in New York City May 29. Sponsored by the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), the Awards recognize excellence in independent publishing and drew nearly 1,300 entries this year.

 “We are proud that The Auschwitz Volunteer has won this prestigious award,” said Terry Tegnazian, co-founder of Aquila Polonica Publishing. “It will help bring recognition to an amazing story of heroism that was suppressed for decades by the communists.”

The Auschwitz Volunteer is the firsthand report of Polish Army officer Witold Pilecki, who volunteered for an almost certainly suicidal secret undercover mission as a prisoner at Auschwitz in order to tell the world what was happening there and to build a resistance organization among the prisoners.

The Auschwitz Volunteer has been acclaimed by reviewers in numerous publications, including  the New York Times, the Atlantic and the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. Writing in The New Republic, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum noted, “Pilecki’s depiction of life in Auschwitz and his description of opposition in Auschwitz deserves to be read alongside the accounts of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel.”

Every one of Aquila Polonica’s previously published titles has won Benjamin Franklin Awards. They include: 303 Squadron: The Legendary Battle of Britain Fighter Squadron, by Arkady Fiedler (Gold Award for History and the Silver Award for Interior Design); The Ice Road: An Epic Journey from the Stalinist Labor Camps to Freedom, by Stefan Waydenfeld (Silver Award for Autobiography/Memoir); Maps and Shadows, by Krysia Jopek (Silver Award for Historical Fiction); and The Mermaid and the Messerschmitt: War Through a Woman’s Eyes 1939-1940, by Rulka Langer (Silver Award for Best First Book, Nonfiction).

Earlier this year, The Auschwitz Volunteer won the 2012 PROSE Award for Biography & Autobiography, given by the Association of American Publishers  to honor  excellence in scholarly and professional publishing. Aquila Polonica was the only independent publisher to win a PROSE Award out of more than 40 categories.