The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz [antikvár]

ForewordThis is a most important book, and a timely reminder of the dangers that face any society once intolerance and racism take hold. Denis Avey, who is now ninety-three, wants his book to be a reminder that Fascism and genocide have not disappeared - as he has said, 'It could happen here'. It could indeed happen anywhere where the veneer of civilization is allowed to wear off, or is torn off by ill will and destructive urges.It is good that Denis Avey now feels able to tell his story. Many of those who went through the traumas of the war years, including Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, found, as he did, that in 1945 'no one wanted to listen'. Sixty-five years later, a British prime minister, Gordon Brown, welcomed him to 10 Downing Street to hear his story, to commend his courage, and to give him a medal inscribed 'In Service of Humanity'.It takes courage to be a witness. To this day, Denis Avey recalls with horror, among so many other horrors, a Jewish boy 'standing to attention, drenched in blood, being beaten around the head.' This book should be read by all those who want an eyewitness account of the nightmare that was the slave labour camp at Buna-Monowitz, just outside Auschwitz, where the Jewish prisoners in particular were subjected to the harshest of treatments, and killed once they were too weak to work for their SS taskmasters.Denis Avey's experiences of the Nazi treatment of the Jews are disturbing - as they should be, for the human mind finds it hard to enter into a worid dominated by cruelty, and where a small