The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz

A True Story of World War II

Contributors

By Denis Avey

With Rob Broomby

On Sale
Sep 11, 2012
Page Count
312 pages
Publisher
Da Capo Press
ISBN-13
9780306821493

The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz is the extraordinary true story of a British soldier who marched willingly into the concentration camp, Buna-Monowitz, known as Auschwitz III.

In the summer of 1944, Denis Avey was being held in a British POW labour camp, E715, near Auschwitz III. He had heard of the brutality meted out to the prisoners there and he was determined to witness what he could.

He hatched a plan to swap places with a Jewish inmate and smuggled himself into his sector of the camp. He spent the night there on two occasions and experienced at first-hand the cruelty of a place where slave workers, had been sentenced to death through labor.

Astonishingly, he survived to witness the aftermath of the Death March where thousands of prisoners were murdered by the Nazis as the Soviet Army advanced. After his own long trek right across central Europe he was repatriated to Britain.

For decades he couldn’t bring himself to revisit the past that haunted his dreams, but now Denis Avey feels able to tell the full story — a tale as gripping as it is moving — which offers us a unique insight into the mind of an ordinary man whose moral and physical courage are almost beyond belief.

Formats and Prices

Price

$21.99

Format

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $21.99
  2. ebook $9.99

Denis Avey

About the Author

Denis Avey fought in the British army during World War II and was captured and held as a prisoner of war in a camp near Auschwitz III. In 2010 he received a British “Hero of the Holocaust” award.

Rob Broomby is a British Affairs correspondent for the BBC World Service. He was formerly the BBC Berlin correspondent and has worked as a broadcast journalist mainly with BBC Radio for more than twenty years

Learn more about this author