Review
** Kirkus Reviews , 5/15/11**
β[A] plainspoken, moving story...a unique war story from a brave man.β
** Publishers Weekly, 5/23/11
**βAn excellent memoir of survival.β
** Deseret**** News,**7/24/11
βSimple, moving, and gripping story that puts one into the death camps and on the death march.β
** Washington**** Times, 8/12/11
**βAn important and profound book.β
Asbury Park** Sunday Press, 8/7/11
**βIn 1944, Avey was a British POW, held in a stalag near Auschwitz...It is only now that he felt able to actually tell his story, and itβs a pretty powerful one, at that.β
** Asbury Park**** Press, 8/28/11**
βAs the Nazi era recedes further and further into the past, stories like this can shock readers into remembering that these things really happened, that they happened to real men and women, and that their impact is still affecting peopleβs lives.β
Kingman Daily Miner, 8/26/11
βThere is an old saying that says, βTruth is stranger than fiction!β The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz...fits this statement to a βTβ...This book is highly recommended. It is another chapter showing manβs inhumanity during WWII through the eyes of a British Christian soldier. Five stars is the rating for this book!β
BookBrowse.com, 9/7/11
βA gripping war-time memoir...[An] astonishing story...Fascinating.β
** Charleston**** Post and Courier, 9/4/11**
β[An] extraordinary story...Avey's voice is strong and down-to-earth, and readers will be hard pressed to put down this testament to the power of human relationships in the face of unimaginable suffering.β
** WWI History , November 2011**
βAn incredible tale of heroism and survival.β
** Washington**** Jewish Week , 9/21/11**
βThis is the most amazing Holocaust memoir it's been my good fortune to read... This is a beautiful, uplifting book about a real ben adom, a mensch, who saw evil and, instead of averting his eyes, did what he could to help the victims. Don't miss it.β
Product Description
The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz is the extraordinary true story of a British soldier who marched willingly into the concentration camp, Buna-Monowitz, known as Auschwitz III.
In the summer of 1944, Denis Avey was being held in a British 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 labor.
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 that haunted his dreams, but now Denis Avey feels able to tell the full storyβa tale as gripping as it is movingβwhich offers us a unique insight into the mind of an ordinary man whose moral and physical courage are almost beyond belief.