The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz

4.00 out of 5 (3 ratings)

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Format:: Paperback
Pages:: 304
Publisher:: Hodder & Stoughton General Division
Publication Date:: 29 September 2011
Category:: Books
ISBN:: 9781444714197

Description

THE MAN WHO BROKE INTO AUSCHWITZ is the extraordinary true story of a British soldier who marched willingly into Buna-Monowitz, the concentration camp known as Auschwitz III. In the summer of 1944, Denis Avey was being held in a 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 labour. 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, 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.

Reader Reviews

Showing 1-3 out of 3 reviews.

I had a difficult time with this book. Not because it was bad, but because it paints a very realistic look at the life of a Prisoner of War in World War II. Add to this the descriptions of the sheer brutality of the German SS troops and the atrocities in the Concentration Camps, you have a book that in the end should be a lesson for everyone that this should never be allowed to happen again. Mr Avey is a hero, plain and simple. And this is a powerful book following the courage it took for him to fight troops in Africa, weather the war as a POW, and to break into Auschwitz just to provide witness to some of histories most heinous crimes.

5.00 out of 5

drlord
David Avey enlists at an early age and is sent off to fight in Egypt and Tobruk. He is captured and is being transported on a ship which is shot down in the Mediterranean Sea. he escapes but is recaptured. Eventually he is transported to various concentra, Ernst, and arranges to swap situations for one night, he follows this up again some time latter. He never forgets those nights spent in the crowded huts with people moansing all around him. He also never forgets the punching of a crying baby by a German guard silencing the baby forever. He arranges for Susan, Ernst's sister, living in Englans to send him cigarettes. It is not until over 50 years later that he learns that Ernst survived the camps and the death march because of those cigarettes and that he lived in the US for many years up to his death just several years before

4.00 out of 5

vietnambutterfly
Denis provides a detailed account of his life as a soldier, prisoner of war, and post-war life. His tale brings to light the good and bad of mankind. I recommend the book based on its historical content and its glimpse into what life can be like. Perhaps it helps us understand what hardship is really like.

3.00 out of 5

GlennBell