Denis Avey (91), a British soldier, remembers that he repeatedly smuggled himself into Auschwitz so he could tell others the truth.
Why would they put British prisoners in Auschwitz?
"It was pretty ghastly at night, you got this terrible stench," he says.
He talked to Jewish prisoners but says they rarely spoke of their previous life, instead they were focused on the hell they were living and the work they were forced to do in factories outside the camp.
He talked to jewish prisoners who were forced to work, but he doesn't mention anything about him being forced to work outside the camp. Seems strange that he trades places with a Jew, by putting on his dirty stripped uniform, but doesn't have to do work like the other Jews. He also doesn't mention that it stunk during the day. Why only at night? Is that when the Jews came back to the camp from the work assignment?
"They very seldom talk about their civil life. They only talked about the situation, the punishments they were getting, the work they were made to do."
This is believable. I have never met a Jew who didn't endlessly complain about everything that has ever happened to them.
He also witnessed the brutality meted out to the prisoners, saying people were shot daily. He was determined to help, especially when he met Jewish prisoner Ernst Lobethall.
Mr Lobethall told him he had a sister Susana who had escaped to England as a child, on the eve of war. Back in his own camp, Mr Avey contacted her via a coded letter to his mother.
He arranged for cigarettes, chocolate and a letter from Susana to be sent to him and smuggled them to his friend. Cigarettes were more valuable than gold in the camp and he hoped he would be able to trade them for favours to ease his plight - and he was right.
Mr Lobethall traded two packs of Players cigarettes in return for getting his shoes resoled. It helped save his life when thousands perished or were murdered on the notorious death marches out of the camps in winter in 1945.
Mr Avey briefly met Susana Lobethall in 1945, ...At the time both of them thought Ernst was dead. He'd actually survived, thanks - in part - to the smuggled cigarettes.
Cigarettes more valuable than gold? Wouldn't the Germans notice cigarette smoke? Who did he trade the cigarettes to to get his shoes repaired, another jew? Where did the jew get the material to repair shoes?
And another person who survived the Holocaust(R) [sic] What an oxymoron.
He admits some may find it hard to believe and acknowledges it was "foolhardy".
Yes, but only the intelligent ones.
It's another Herman Rosenblat
