The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz

platypus

platypus

platypus

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Did a search and didn't spot anything, so...

Thought I'd share this wonderful story with everyone.

Denis Avey, even at the age of 91, cuts a formidable figure. More than 6ft tall, with a severe short back and sides and a piercing glare, he combines the pan-ache of Errol Flynn with the dignity of age. This is the former Desert Rat, who, in 1944, broke into — yes, into — Auschwitz, and he looks exactly as I expected. He removes his monocle for the camera, and one of his pupils slips sideways before realigning. It is a glass eye. I ask him about it. He tells me that in 1944, he cursed an SS officer who was beating a Jew in the camp. He received a blow with a pistol butt and his eye was knocked in.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article7039572.ece​
Made me feel very proud :).
 
interesting read - everybody should make the effort to see Auschwitz or one of the other death camps to give some perspective
 
This along with a picture of him, a true hero, should be added to the thought provoking image thread within speakers corner.
 
Skidder said:
interesting read - everybody should make the effort to see Auschwitz or one of the other death camps to give some perspective
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Agreed. It puts it into perspective. Me and the wife have been to Sachsenhausen and plan on a trip ti Auschwitz at some point in the near future.

The whole area at Sachsenhausen felt like it had been stained by death. God knows what Auschwitz will feel like...
 
I remember this on the news not long back, got nothing but admiration for the fella.

Iirc he said he wanted to see it for his own eyes so he could tell the world what was happening. I imagine the guy he swapped with was relieved to get some decent food and a decent nights kip too.
 
Wow. What a read. What a man. What horrors he must have seen. Incredible. I found the story and his experiences absolutely incredible.
 
LordSplodge said:
Agreed. It puts it into perspective. Me and the wife have been to Sachsenhausen and plan on a trip ti Auschwitz at some point in the near future.

The whole area at Sachsenhausen felt like it had been stained by death. God knows what Auschwitz will feel like...
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It's worth spending a couple of days in Krakow as well. It's a fantastic city. Go to the salt mines too, well worth a visit.
 
LordSplodge said:
Agreed. It puts it into perspective. Me and the wife have been to Sachsenhausen and plan on a trip ti Auschwitz at some point in the near future.

The whole area at Sachsenhausen felt like it had been stained by death. God knows what Auschwitz will feel like...
Click to expand...

Auschwitz is no better, you can almost smell and feel death around you. The visit to the two camps is dreadfully depressing, we left the place in what I would describe as a state of numbness.
 
LordSplodge said:
The whole area at Sachsenhausen felt like it had been stained by death. God knows what Auschwitz will feel like...
Click to expand...

Auschwitz is interesting, although you don't really know what is authentic and what has been rebuilt by the musuem.... that disappointed me.

I also was attacked by a wasp standing on 'The Concrete Platform' where the unwanted were unloaded from the trains and subsequently dropped my camera, only concrete ground in that whole camp and i drop my camera on it.

The only place i got a sense of the horror was in the rooms full of human hair, shoes, prosthetic limbs etc.. that was the most hard hitting.

I want to go back because as we paid for a guide she walked us through and explained everything in great detail, the only problem was that as someone who studies history and knows some german i was trying to read the Nazi documentation in the rooms, amazing as it was documents hand signed and written by people like Himmler, Heydrich, Goring etc.. as i was trying to translate them before i knew it she was in the next building. So i plan on going back and doing it all on my own, in my own time.

EDIT: infact the room that hit hard the most was the pile of luggage/suitcases, peoples names and addresses hand scribed on to their luggage... i could just imagine them writing it on thinking that they were off to a new country.
 
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simulatorman said:
Auschwitz is no better, you can almost smell and feel death around you. The visit to the two camps is dreadfully depressing, we left the place in what I would describe as a state of numbness.
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That's exactly how I felt when I went there. Truly horrific if you start to imagine everything that went on there :(

I also went to see the mass graves and the trenches along the French battlefield. Horrific as well. :(
 
I remember from my trip to Auschwitz a display about Witold Pilecki, a Polish soldier who volunteered to go into the camp to gather information on what was happening there.
 
i am guilty of being in the "holocaust deniers" group... just deny the numbers and i don't buy into the post war propaganda, like anne frank and all the bs stories they keep going on about it as well. They also call it "the holocaust" when realy it was "a holocaust"

playing the victim, exploiting it over the years, driving it into the consciousness of the west for pity and create a victim perspective for the jews so they can get away with their crimes.

just my 2 cents... on that one..
 
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