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Denis Avey (11 January 1919 – 16 July 2015) was a British veteran of the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
who was held as a
prisoner of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold prisoners of w ...
at
E715, a subcamp of
Auschwitz. While there he saved the life of a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
prisoner, Ernst Lobethal, by smuggling cigarettes to him.
For that he was made a
British Hero of the Holocaust in 2010.
Avey said that he exchanged uniforms with a Jewish prisoner and smuggled himself into Auschwitz to witness the treatment of Jewish inmates, whose camp was separate from but adjoined that of British POWs. His claim has been challenged.
His memoir ''
The Man who Broke into Auschwitz'', written with Rob Broomby, was published in 2011.
Life (until retirement)
Avey was born in
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...
, England, in 1919. As a boy he learned boxing, was head boy at school and studied at Leyton technical college. He joined the army in 1939 at the age of 20, and fought in the desert campaigns of North Africa in the
7th Armoured Division, (the "Desert Rats"). He was captured by the Germans while attacking
Erwin Rommel's forces near
Tobruk
Tobruk or Tobruck (; grc, Ἀντίπυργος, ''Antipyrgos''; la, Antipyrgus; it, Tobruch; ar, طبرق, Tubruq ''Ṭubruq''; also transliterated as ''Tobruch'' and ''Tubruk'') is a port city on Libya's eastern Mediterranean coast, near ...
, Libya, and saw his best friend killed next to him.
[ After his prisoner transport ship was torpedoed he claimed to have escaped to Greece by floating ashore on top of a packing crate, but was recaptured after landing.
After being retaken prisoner, Avey was placed in the E715 prison camp for British soldiers, next to the Auschwitz ]concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...
where Jews were imprisoned. He was there from 1943 until January 1945. While there he befriended a Jewish inmate of Auschwitz, Ernst Lobethal, from the adjoining Jewish section. He obtained cigarettes from Ernst's sister, who had escaped from Germany to Britain on a Kindertransport
The ''Kindertransport'' (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort of children (but not their parents) from Nazi-controlled territory that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World ...
before the war. He secretly passed the cigarettes to Ernst who used them as currency to help him survive.
Avey said that he twice exchanged uniforms with a Jewish inmate to smuggle himself into the inmate's camp in order to witness for himself the treatment of Jews, which he could see was completely different from the treatment of British POWs. While British POWs were forced to work six days a week, they could use their free time to play football and basketball.[ While their conditions were dreadful, according to one British inmate, "they were as nothing compared to what the Jews next door went through".][ Avey agreed, and describes the plight of the Jews:
Avey explained to '']The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
'' that he was the type that needed to see 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.["Denis Avey, Auschwitz witness - obituary"]
''The Daily Telegraph'', 27 August 2015
He was aware that he was taking "a hell of a chance", and states: "When you think about it in today's environment it is ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous. You wouldn't think anyone would think or do that, but that is how I was. I had red hair and a temperament to match. Nothing would stop me."[, includes video interview with Avey]
Avey escaped during the "death marches
A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war or other captives or deportees in which individuals are left to die along the way. It is distinguished in this way from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Article 19 of the Geneva Conven ...
" in April 1945 which followed the Nazis' evacuation of Auschwitz. Although suffering from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, i ...
he caught in the camp, he broke away undetected, then made his way through Silesia
Silesia (, also , ) is a historical region of Central Europe that lies mostly within Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is approximately , and the population is estimated at around 8,000,000. Silesia is split ...
, Czechoslovakia and Germany.[Avey, Denis and Broomby, Ro]
"THE MAN WHO BROKE INTO AUSCHWITZ by Denis Avey with Rob Broomby"
30 June 2014[ He eventually ran into Americans who helped get him back to England, and to his family who assumed he had died.][
After he returned to England, Avey spent the next year and a half hospitalised with tuberculosis.][ Afterwards, when he tried to report what he saw in Auschwitz, he encountered resistance and indifference.][ From then on, he chose to not to speak of it again to anyone:
]In 1947, I went to the military authorities to submit my information about Auschwitz. Their eyes glazed over. I wasn't taken seriously. I was shocked, especially after the risks I'd taken. I felt completely disillusioned, and traumatised as well. So from then on I bottled it up, and tried to piece my life back together.
The author Sir Martin Gilbert explains that by 1947, after the Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded m ...
were finished, "people just wanted to get on with their lives". Average citizens were not interested in discussing the war anymore, nor were they interested in hearing war stories from veterans or former POWs like Avey. "It must have been very painful", says Gilbert.[
Besides tuberculosis, Avey suffered from ]posttraumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that can develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats ...
(PTSD) before it was recognised as a medical illness, a condition few people were aware of.[ For the following years he battled with nightmares, jumpiness, and an inability to speak about his POW experiences. He suffered from a violent temper, stomach pains and loss of memory.][ From a beating during his incarceration, he also lost vision in one eye which became cancerous and required being replaced with a glass eye.][ The cause of the beating, Avey said, came when he cursed an SS officer who was beating a Jew in the camp. The officer took his pistol butt and gave Avey a blow directly on his eye.][Simons, Jacob Wallace]
"British PoW Who Broke Into Auschwitz — and Survived"
, ''The Times'', 25 February 2010
When war crime prosecutors later sought Avey's testimony for the Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II.
Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded m ...
, they were unable to locate him.[ He kept the traumatic events about his wartime past a complete secret from everyone, including his first and second wives, along with his daughter. "I knew there was something," said his wife, Audrey. "Naturally, you ask questions. But I never got an answer."][ Avey explains "The sad irony was that I went in there to find out the truth, so I could tell everybody about the horrors of the Nazi regime. But I was so traumatised at my whole experience of the Auschwitz camps it took me 60 years to be able to recount the horrors I saw."]BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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...
to talk about war pensions. His memories began tumbling out, shocking the television hosts who were unable to believe what they were hearing. As a result, the BBC began production of a documentary, discovering the name of the young Jewish prisoner Avey had befriended in Auschwitz, Ernst Lobethal."
["Bearing Witness to Nazi Horror"]
''Los Angeles Times'', 3 April 2010 When asked why he risked his life to infiltrate the Jewish sections of the concentration camp, he states that he needed to see for himself "the unspeakable things being done to the Jews at Auschwitz."". At the age of 91, he reflected back on this episode:
He had assumed that Ernst had died during the death march, but tracked down and met Ernst's sister, Susanne, who also thought he died.
She had escaped to England before war broke out in 1939.
Years later, Susanne learned that her brother had survived, in part thanks to Avey, and had lived in America with his new family until his death.
While he never got to meet Ernst, he said that his surviving was "bloody marvellous."
Ernst, like Avey, refused to burden anyone with his own suffering and never talked about Auschwitz until very late in life. But, says Avey, "I, too, have left it late. I will always regret not tracking Ernst down while he was alive. If I'd known he was living in America, I would have gone and found him, without doubt. But I am proud to have played a small part in helping one man through the obscenity of Auschwitz."
Avey married twice and pursued a career in engineering, which culminated in him building a factory near Newcastle. He retired to
Bradwell, Derbyshire.
Recognition
After retirement he became active amongst ex-POWs seeking compensation for wartime imprisonment and began to talk about these experiences. In 2001 he described these in an interview with the
Imperial War Museum, London, where he stated that he had obtained cigarettes for Ernst and also gave the name of Ernst's sister Susanne. He also stated that he had exchanged uniforms with a bunkmate of Ernst and entered
Birkenau in the company of Ernst.
Avey got details about events inside Birkenau which he sent home to his mother and sister in code. His mother sent two letters regarding this to the War Office but never received a reply.
He was interviewed on BBC
Radio Derby in 2003. In 2005 the ''
Daily Mirror
The ''Daily Mirror'' is a British national daily tabloid. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply ''The Mirror''. It had an average daily print c ...
'' reported that Avey claimed to have swapped uniforms with Ernst and entered Birkenau where he witnessed prisoners being sent to the gas chambers.
In May 2009 the
British Government announced the establishment of the
British Hero of the Holocaust award. That autumn Rob Broomby, a reporter from the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, who had known of Avey's story for some years, was able to trace Ernst's sister in