Denis Avey (2011) The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz.

This is a memoir ghosted by Rom Broomby, with a dedication  ‘To the memory of Ernie Lobert, and a man, I knew only as Hans’.  The title of the book is misleading.  Denis Avey did not break into Auschwitz. He was a British prisoner of war working as a slave labourer constructing a plant for IB Farben (now called Bayer IG Farben) in Auschwitz. In the camp hierarchy he was literally at the top of the food chain. His uniform kept him relatively warm and he’d a pair of work boots that fitted him. Every calorie spent in Auschwitz was a place nearer death.  To paraphrase  Primo Levi, death begins wiht the feet. Jews, or ‘stripeys’,  as Avey calls them  were issued with rough wooden clogs. He conceived a plan to help a ‘stripey’ by swapping places with and to find out what conditions were like in the inner camp of Auschwitz . He  practiced the round shouldered and stumbling gait of the stripeys and selected to help a Jew called Ernst Lobethal (Lobet). Injustice was swift in Auscwitz, for such a plan to work,  he needed to bribe the Kapo with cigarettes and hope they weren’t caught and killed. He did this on two occassions, swapping ‘uniforms’ with Ernst in a hut in the IG Farben plant.  But he did more than this. He got a message out to Ernst’s sister Susanne who had been one of the few to escape on a Kinder transport to Britain that her brother was still alive. It’s difficult not to fall into the trap of talking about miracles when a button, a scrap of leather, or a smidgeon of meat in rations can be regarded as such a thing, but after Avery’s letter he received a Red Cross package with a few hundred Player’s cigarettes from home.  Ernst’s share allowed him to get rubber soles put on his clogs. This was crucial as, when it was clear the war was lost, it was one of the factors that allowed him to survive the death march out of Auschwitz. But for every case for survival ten thousand, or  one hundred thousand, ‘stripeys’ are standing behind them that did not survive. Avey was haunted by a  boy beaten to death by the pistol butt of a Nazi guard.  His protest lead him indirectly to losing an eye after the war. There are other  stories here of death and survival. How many miracles makes a man I do not know, but Avey and Ernst are remarkable men.