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The Man Who Smuggled Himself into Auschwitz

(BBC News) Rob Broomby - Denis Avey, 91, was a courageous and determined British soldier in World War II. He was captured by the Germans and imprisoned in a camp connected to the Germans' largest concentration camp, Auschwitz, and repeatedly smuggled himself into the camp. He says he wanted to witness what was going on inside and find out the truth about the gas chambers, so he could tell others. He arranged to swap for one night at a time with a Jewish inmate he had come to trust. He exchanged his uniform for the filthy, stripy garments the man had to wear. For the Auschwitz inmate it meant valuable food and rest in the British camp, while for Denis it was a chance to gather facts on the inside. He describes Auschwitz as "hell on earth" and says he would lie awake at night listening to the ramblings and screams of prisoners. "There were nearly three million human beings worked to death in different factories," says Avey. "They knew at that rate they'd last about five months." He says he would ask where people he'd met previously had gone and he would be told they'd "gone up the chimney." He also witnessed the brutality meted out to the prisoners, saying people were shot daily.
2009-12-04 07:59:33
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