Denis Avey
Former soldier and wartime PoW who claimed, controversially, to have broken into Auschwitz
DENIS AVEY, who has died aged 96, stirred controversy in 2011 with his book The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz (written with the BBC journalist Rob Broomby), in which he claimed that, during his time as a prisoner of war in a camp in southern Poland, he had swapped uniforms with an inmate of Auschwitz on two occasions and gained access to the concentration camp in order that he might testify about conditions.
There is no doubt that Avey did try to help camp inmates. Ernst Lobethal, a Holocaust survivor beside whom Avey had worked on the construction of a great I G Farben synthetic rubber and methanol plant next to the camp, testified that Avey (whom he knew by his nickname “Ginger”), had saved his life by smuggling cigarettes to him which he was able to use as currency. However, the central claim of Avey’s book – that he swapped places with another inmate, a Dutch Jew called Hans, so he could infiltrate Auschwitz III (a slave labour camp that formed part of the sprawling killing machine that included Auschwitz I, a Polish army barracks turned concentration camp, and Auschwitz II, otherwise known as Birkenau, the extermination camp) – was hotly disputed by several historians. Even fellow PoWs were quoted as saying that such a swap would have been “unfeasible”.
Avey wrote that he entered the camp in disguise twice, explaining in an interview with The Daily Telegraph that he had always believed in seeing things for himself: “My mates didn’t want me to do it but they agreed because they realised I was going to do it, and that was that. I had watched people being murdered literally every day and I knew someone would have to answer for it. I wanted to get in and identify the people responsible.”
The young private spent two nights in Auschwitz, speaking in whispers to two other inmates who had helped to smuggle him through the camp gates in a returning work party. The three men shared the same bunk, swapping stories and body lice during a night punctuated by the groans and cries of those soon to die.
In his account of camp life, Avey recalled the “sweet, ghastly smell of the distant crematoria”; the sight of a shaven–headed body hanging from a gibbet; the frenzied bartering of small items – buttons and nails, say – which might be exchanged for food; the “ghastly” gruel “made of rotten cabbage and potato peelings”; the camp “kapos” storming through the sleeping huts, kicking the bunks and barking orders. It was, he recalled, “a ghastly, terrifying experience”.
There were, however, allegations of discrepancies between the book and an account which Avey had given to the Imperial War Museum in 2001. There were also questions over why he had kept his silence for so long given that his intention had been to testify about conditions in the camp. Yad Vashem considered Avey for the honour Righteous among the Nations, but said it was unable to grant the award because it was unable to substantiate his account of the prisoner swap.
Yet there were many who believed him. The historian Martin Gilbert provided a foreword to his book, and the historian Lyn Smith, who had conducted the 2001 interview with Avey, argued that it was unsurprising that in trying to recall events of so long ago he had made a few factual errors. Avey himself explained that when he had tried to report his experiences to his commanding officer after the war, he had encountered indifference, and that when prosecutors sought his testimony for the Nuremberg Trials they had been unable to trace him. After this he had kept silent about his experiences, struggling with what would now be called post-traumatic stress disorder.
He was unperturbed by the controversy surrounding his book: “I know what happened and that is all that matters to me,” he said.
The son of a farmer, Denis Avey was born in Essex on January 11 1919 and studied engineering at Leyton technical college before enlisting in the Army in October 1939. His father had trained him in firearms and his marksmanship earned him a place in 2nd Battalion, the Rifle Brigade.
In August 1940 he left Liverpool aboard a troopship bound for Egypt. The following year he saw plenty of action in the desert, which he was lucky to survive. Part of the crew of a Bren gun carrier, he narrowly escaped death when a grenade exploded inside the vehicle, killing his best friend.
In November 1941, however, he was captured by Afrika Korps soldiers at Sidi Rezegh. On December 9 he was one of some 2,000 Commonwealth PoWs being taken to Italy in the merchantman Sebastiano Venier when she was torpedoed by a British submarine off the coast of Greece. Typically, he took matters into his own hands, climbing out of the hold and jumping over the side.
Clinging to some wreckage, he reached the Greek coast and was recaptured some days later. A year in an Italian PoW camp followed, punctuated by an escape attempt. Considered a “suspect’’ prisoner, he was sent to Germany, ending up, in 1943, in camp E–715, a PoW camp situated next to the new I G Farben factory and a short distance from the Auschwitz III camp. He soon found himself working side by side with Jewish slave labourers from Auschwitz and civilian forced labourers. “We did similar back-breaking work but with one crucial difference,” he recalled. “The Jewish workers… were expected to die on the job.”
Avey left Auschwitz in a column of prisoners just as the Red Army approached in 1945. Finally making his escape, he was liberated by the Americans, though tuberculosis caught during his incarceration led to an 18-month stay in hospital.
After his recovery, Denis Avey joined a firm in Manchester, where he became chief engineer, and took up martial arts in one of many attempts to exorcise his demons. After retirement, he moved to Bradwell in the Peak District.
In 2010 he was named a British Hero of the Holocaust by the British Government. He is survived by his second wife, Audrey, and by a daughter. Denis Avey, born January 11 1919, died July 16 2015