A few days before the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which reminds us every year the awful crimes perpetrated by Nazi during Second World War, it could be nice to remind too a positive and touching tale happened at the same time, but which has been aim of a high pitched discussion.
It’s the Deny Avey’s story, which talks about a British veteran who was held as a prisoner of war. Nothing to write home about until here, but the unusual feature is that – according to his deposition – Mr. Avey wanted and succeeded to get into a camp connected to the Germans’ largest concentration camp, Auschwitz, to be witness of what was going on inside.
He managed to do that smuggling himself into prisoner’s camp while he was kept imprisoned in PoW (Prisoner of War) camp E715A for British soldiers near Monowitz, a German Industrial complex close to Auschwitz, from 1943 until January 1945. His catch placed during an attempt of escape from Germans in Greece, after he had been already captured while he was attacking Rommel’s forces near Tobruk, Lybia.
As Mr. Avey claims, during his imprisonment at POW camp he arranged to swap for one night at a time with a Jewish inmate he had come to trust. He twice took off his uniform and wore a filthy uniform of a “stripey”- as PoWs called the Jewish inmates because of their striped uniforms – to have a chance to gather facts and discover the truth about gas chambers. On the other hand, for the Auschwitz prisoner it meant valuable food and rest in British camp, far away from that place of death.
On his interview for BBC he described Auschwitz as “hell on earth” and said he had used to linger awake at night listening laments and screams of prisoners. Moreover, he talked to Jewish inmate, especially about the hell they were living and the tortures of forced works.
“They knew at that rate they’d last about five months. […] It was so impersonal. Auschwitz was evil, everything about it was wrong.”
He witnessed the cruelty meted out inside that lager, where people were executed by Nazi everyday.
Although he lived that tragic experience, he managed to befriend a Jewish inmate of Auschwitz, Ernst Lobethall, whose sister Susana had succeeded to escape from Germany to England as a child, at the beginning of the War. She gave cigarettes, chocolate and a letter to Avey, who subsequently passed them to Ernst through hidden way.
That was really important for Mr. Lobethall because cigarettes were worth as gold in the camp and indeed, trading 2 packets of cigarettes, he got his shoes resoled and it helped save his life when thousands died or were murdered on the notorious death marches out of the camps in winter in 1945.
When Mr. Avey came home at the end of the war in 1945, he quickly wanted to met Susana Lobethall to know some news about her brother Ernst, but at that time both of them thought he was dead. Later Susana lost touch with Avey, who was never able to know that Ernst Lobethall had survived until former BBC Berlin correspondent Rob Broomby told him he had found Susana again, as he was researching the book they were writing together, “The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz”.
She told him that Ernst went on to live a long and happy life as a lawyer in America and the news of his survival was met with great joy but unfortunately he couldn’t be traced.
In honor of his deeds, Avey was presented by ex Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a “British Hero Of The Holocaust Award” and he received yet another similar recognitions. Furthermore, he’s been guest of numerous radio and TV shows, where he was talking about his unbelievable experience.
So unbelievable that an increasing number of people haven’t believed him. They include former Auschwitz prisoners, historians and Jewish organizations, who doubt very much that he broke into Auschwitz. As Guy Walters writes for Daily Mail Online, there would be some contradictions and facts Mr. Avey’s can’t back up in his tale, such as his swap with the Jewish inmate.
Most of the skeptics have pointed out Mr. Avey started to tell about the swap just in 2009 and Brian Bishop, his former fellow PoW is even more scathing: “Why does he start telling this story now? I don’t understand why all these stories are coming out now. It looks like they’re waiting for everybody to die and then no one can contradict them.”
Understanding where we can find the truth about this part of the tale is such a really hard thing, also because it needed a deep investigation over historic reconstructions. Nevertheless, we know that before Mr. Lobethall died he recorded his survival story on video for the Shoah Foundation and in it he told about his friendship with a British soldier in Auschwitz.
He also spoke of how the cigarettes which were given by “Ginger” saved his life. “It was like being given the Rockefeller Centre,” he says in the video.
And “Ginger” was exactly Denis Avey, that’s for sure.