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Denis Avey (11 January 1919 – 16 July 2015) was a British veteran of the Second World War who was held as a prisoner of war at a camp adjacent to Monowitz. Whilst there he saved the life of Jewish prisoner Ernst Lobethal, by smuggling cigarettes to him. For this he was made a British Hero of the Holocaust in 2010. He also claimed that he exchanged uniforms with a Jewish prisoner to smuggle himself into Monowitz to gain information about the treatment of inmates: this claim was challenged. His memoir ''The Man who Broke into Auschwitz'' written with Rob Broomby, was published in 2011. ==Life (until retirement)== Avey was born in Essex, outside of London, in 1919. As a boy he learned boxing, was head boy at school and studied at Leyton technical college. He joined the army in 1939 at the age of 20, and fought in the desert campaigns of North Africa in the 7th Armoured Division, known as the "Desert Rats". He was captured by the Germans while attacking Rommel's forces near Tobruk, Libya, and saw his best friend killed next to him. He escaped to Greece by crossing the Mediterranean Sea floating on top of a packing crate, but was recaptured after landing. After being retaken prisoner, he was moved to a POW camp E715A for British soldiers near Monowitz, a German industrial complex, close to Auschwitz, where he was kept imprisoned from 1943 until January 1945. During his time in the camp he managed to befriend a Jewish inmate of Auschwitz III, Ernst Lobethal. He obtained cigarettes from Ernst's sister, who had escaped from Germany to Britain on a Kindertransport before the war, which he secretly passed to Ernst. Avey also says that on two separate occasions he exchanged uniforms with a Jewish inmate and smuggled himself into that inmate's camp with a view to obtaining information about the treatment of inmates. He explained to ''The Daily Telegraph'' during an interview that he was the type that needed to see things for himself: The name identity of the other prisoner and the name of the camp vary in different accounts.〔〔, includes video interview with Avey〕 Avey escaped during the "death marches" in April 1945 which followed the Nazis' evacuation of Auschwitz. Although suffering from tuberculosis, he "saw a chance to escape and seized it, he states." Avey also estimates that around 15,000 prisoners died on the way. “The road was littered with corpses.”〔 He eventually ran into Americans who helped get him back to England and his family, who thought he was dead.〔("The British PoW who broke into Auschwitz — and survived" ), ''The Sunday Times'', 25 February 2010〕 After the war, he assumed that Ernst had died when he had been evacuated on a death march. Avey made his way back to England where he briefly met Ernst's sister Susanne. He says that when he tried to report his experience in Auschwitz III he encountered indifference from his commanding officer and that when prosecutors sought his testimony for the Nuremberg Trials they were unable to trace him. After this he kept silent about his experiences, suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. Avey explains: "The sad irony was that I went in there to find out the truth, so I could tell everybody about the horrors of the Nazi regime. But I was so traumatised at my whole experience of the Auschwitz camps it took me 60 years to be able to recount the horrors I saw."〔 He married twice and pursued a career in engineering, which culminated in him building a factory near Newcastle. He retired to Bradwell, Derbyshire. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Denis Avey」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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