6-figure sum for Avey's 'I broke into Auschwitz' story

[astro3]

Dennis Avey got a six-figure advance sum for his crap ‘I-broke-into-Auschwitz’ story’ just published, now being hyped in British national newspapers. Comments being posted on the Daily Mail report are mainly sceptical http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... l#comments

Wiki hits are now running at around 1000 per day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Avey

Two earlier CODOH posts on him in 2009:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5802&p=39287&hilit=avey&sid=e148f1477d5a018ae03264b01c8fa1a4#p39287
and
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5803&p=39530&hilit=avey&sid=60b8e70759f8fab4f974f93dd40e3b82#p39530

Its a total ripoff from an earlier book. Here are three of the British Daily Mail comments:

• Well if he says it is true it must be mustn't it. After all it's in the papers and they don't lie. This story has more holes than a string vest but the gullible will believe everything without question. Just re read the story and look for the inconsistencies.

• His story is similar to that of Sergeant Major Charles Coward who testified at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and at a civil claim trial against IG Farben that he had smuggled himself into Auschwitz. His book 'The Password is Courage' has been through ten editions since it was first published in 1954 and remains in print. Coward is described on the back cover of the current edition as 'The Man who Broke into Auschwitz' which is also the title of Avey's book. I haven't found any mention of Coward in Avey. Incidentally re your picture, the gates are from Auschwitz I, Avey and Coward both desrcibe the inside of Auschwitz III. The IG Farben plant at Auschwitz was set up to produce synthetic rubber and methanol rather than poison gas.

• this story has more holes than the holiest Swiss cheese. Auschwitz III - also known as Auschwitz-Buna or Monowitz - was an industrial plant that produced Buna rubber. Zyklon-B was never produced there for a start. Also, what's the story here? Is it about Auschwitz III, or did this man somehow manage to make his way into Auschwitz-Birkenau? What "nearby crematoriums" was this man able to smell? There were no crematoriums at Auschwitz III, and I doubt that even a grizzly bear would have been able to smell anything from four miles away if he happens to be talking about Birkenau, especially when you are standing in the middle of an plant manufactiring rubber. He got to spend time with doomed prisoners, yet was somehow never taken along in one of those random groups to be gassed. Very strange, and bordering on the fantastical. This reads rather like The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas for adults.

Piotr Setkiewicz, the chief historian at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum in Poland said he did not have any independent witnesses to verify Avey's story. He voiced doubt about Avey's account. Breaking into Auschwitz "would be extremely risky, and I cannot see any reason for doing such an exchange," he said.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadi ... Id=6433668

[simon1003]

The Daily Mail are now questioning the whole Avey story:

Did this British PoW really smuggle himself into Auschwitz to expose the Holocaust... or is his account pure fantasy and an insult to millions who died there?
By GUY WALTERS
Last updated at 12:36 AM on 9th April 2011

The story of Denis Avey is one of deep compassion and breathtaking heroism. It is a wartime story that he has kept to himself for several decades, before finally revealing the full account in a book that was published this month.
Called The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, the book is already a best-seller.
It tells how Mr Avey was held by the Germans in a PoW camp next to Auschwitz, and how he risked his life by swapping places with a Jewish inmate on two occasions and smuggling himself into the concentration camp to record for posterity the horrors of history’s greatest crime.
The book also tells how Avey saved the life of another Jewish inmate, called Ernst Lobethal, by supplying him with cigarettes.
Lobethal had been raised in an orphanage in Breslau in what is now Poland, and in January 1943 he was sent to Auschwitz, where he had to use all his wits to survive.
He was able to trade the cigarettes for new soles on his shoes — shoes vital to his survival in a forced ‘death’ march from the camp through snow at the end of the war.
When he was Prime Minister, Gordon Brown presented Avey with a British Hero Of The Holocaust Award at a reception at 10 Downing Street.
His name was also put forward to Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, to be made ‘Righteous Among The Nations’, an honour given to Gentiles who saved Jews during the war, held by Oskar Schindler. Avey has been dubbed a man of ‘limitless moral and physical courage’ by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Henry Kamm, and his book carries a foreword by the renowned historian Sir Martin Gilbert.
He has given countless talks about his experiences and has appeared many times on TV and radio.
Just last week, Avey made millions pause for thought when he gave a lengthy and humbling interview to BBC Breakfast, in which he revealed his horrific experiences.

Avey’s story is reaching a huge audience — his book is being published in at least ten countries. And he is taken aback by all the attention. ‘On reflection,’ he says, ‘I can’t really believe that people would believe what I did.’
The trouble is that increasing numbers of people don’t believe him. They include former Auschwitz prisoners, historians and Jewish organisations — and they all doubt very much that he broke into Auschwitz.
This week Dr Piotr Setkiewicz, the head historian at Auschwitz, said that he did not believe Mr Avey’s story of the swap. He said that his fear was the story could provide ammunition for Holocaust deniers who are keen to exploit implausible memoirs in order to ‘prove’ that the Holocaust did not take place.

The World Jewish Congress has now called on Mr Avey’s publishers to verify the historical accuracy of the book. ‘We are deeply concerned about the charge that a significant part of Mr Avey’s story — ie that he supposedly smuggled himself into the Auschwitz-Buna concentration camp — is exaggerated if not completely fabricated,’ said the organisation.
It also emerged this week that Yad Vashem felt unable to honour Mr Avey with Righteous Among The Nations, because it could not back up his claims.
‘We didn’t find anyone to confirm it,’ said Irena Steinfeldt, a spokeswoman for Yad Vashem. ‘We went through several testimonies of Jewish inmates, and none of them mentioned that it happened. There was nothing to substantiate it.’
Ms Steinfeldt added: ‘We often get recommendations that show that the applicant has won an honour from a government, but that in itself is not evidence.’
Former prisoners at Auschwitz and at camp E715 — the British PoW camp next door in which Mr Avey was held — have also strongly disputed Mr Avey’s story, arguing that the swap would have been impossible. Let us look in detail at his main claim — that he smuggled himself into Auschwitz,
Born in 1919, Avey was enlisted into the Rifle Brigade in 1939 and was sent to Egypt. He was captured by the Afrika Korps in Libya in November 1940 and after a succession of PoW camps, including a year in Italy, ended up at the PoW camp E715.
There he worked as a labourer and was housed only a few hundred yards from one of the major parts of Auschwitz, known as Auschwitz III or Monowitz.
It was while he saw the horrific treatment being meted out to the Jewish inmates of Auschwitz with whom he worked in the same chemical factory that he came up with the idea of swapping place with a Jewish prisoner. His motive, he claims, was to see what was happening for himself so that he ‘could bear witness’ and help hold the Nazis to account after the war.
'To do something like that you need to have several people helping on both sides — our side and the Jewish side'
According to Avey, the plan relied on an enormous amount of preparation. For weeks, he says, he had studied the Jewish prisoners at the Auschwitz III camp and had learned how to imitate them. He shaved his head, smeared his face with dirt, and then found a Jewish prisoner with whom he swapped.
He says he used cigarettes as a bribe to obtain a pair of wooden clogs that were worn by the Jewish inmates and bribed a ‘kapo’ — or guard — to turn a blind eye to the swap.
One day, as the two work columns of the Jewish and the British prisoners drew close, the Jewish prisoner and Avey ducked into a nearby hut, quickly swapped their clothes, and then darted back into each other’s columns.
While he was inside Auschwitz III, Avey claimed to have seen a corpse hanging from a gibbet, endured a night in the barracks alongside groaning and screaming Jewish inmates, and breakfasted on rotten cabbage and potato peelings.
He says he returned to E715 and later swapped places with the prisoner a second time, although both decided that to risk another attempt would be tempting fate. Both knew the penalty would be death if they were caught. However, the idea that both men could have simply switched columns, twice, without being seen by German guards or spotted afterwards is implausible.
‘I don’t believe it,’ says Brian Bishop, 91, a survivor of Dunkirk who had been captured in Africa in 1942 and was at camp E715, ‘I can’t understand how he did it. To do something like that you need to have several people helping on both sides — our side and the Jewish side.’
Sam Pivnik, 84, a Polish Jew, was sent to Auschwitz aged 16 in August 1943 and held there as prisoner 135913 until January 1945. He shares similarly strong doubts. ‘Avey’s story seems to me highly unlikely,’ he says.
‘Swapping places with an Auschwitz prisoner wasn’t just risking his own life, but those of everyone else in his block; and he was taking a huge risk that he wouldn’t be informed on. It isn’t a chance that I would have taken. Prisoners in Auschwitz were so desperate, you couldn’t take the risk of trusting them.’

Auschwitz historian Dr Setkiewicz agrees with both survivors. He points out that many people would have had to have been involved in such an exchange, and it would have been extremely risky as there were many spies in the camp: ‘As there are no testimonies by other survivors, I certainly would not include this story in any book that I wrote.’
Then there is the inconsistency in Mr Avey’s accounts both of the identity of the man with whom he swapped and where the swap took place.
In his book, he writes that he swapped places with a Dutch Jewish inmate called ‘Hans’ and smuggled himself from the British PoW camp into the part of the death camp known as Auschwitz III.
However, in an interview he gave to the Daily Mail in December 2009, Mr Avey — who says he was called ‘Ginger’ when he was in the camp — claimed to have swapped with prisoner Ernst Lobethal, the man to whom he smuggled cigarettes.
In the same interview — and in a talk he gave subsequently to students at Oxford — Mr Avey said that Ernst was in Auschwitz II, or Birkenau, which is some four miles from Auschwitz III.
In his book, Mr Avey also writes of passing under the infamous ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ sign — ‘Work Sets You Free’ — as he enters Auschwitz III. As Dr Setkiewicz confirms, there was no such sign there; it was at the Auschwitz I camp some six miles away.
Mr Avey claims the clothes he borrowed from the Jewish inmate were infested with lice. This detail is doubted by former inmate Sam Pivnik. ‘We were made to be scrupulously clean at all times in Auschwitz III work-camps, and you risked a severe beating if you got dirty,’ Pivnik says.
‘The SS were terrified of typhus outbreaks and the prisoners’ uniforms, bedding and barracks were endlessly disinfected and deloused.’

Mr Avey’s claim to have broken into Auschwitz is even dismissed by Ingrid Lobet, the daughter of Ernst Lobethal. While Ms Lobet says she has no reason to doubt that Mr Avey did indeed smuggle some of the ‘the magical international currency’ of cigarettes to her father, she does not accept the story of the swap.
‘I don’t believe this happened,’ she says. ‘Where is the detail in what he saw there that can’t be gleaned from the vaguest Holocaust account?
‘The British PoWs were fed,’ she adds. ‘The Jews were not. The Jews looked starving, the British did not. Most of the Jews spoke only Yiddish. How is some starving, Yiddish-speaking Jew going to be mistaken for a British PoW while in PoW barracks?
‘Did “Ginger” memorise the switched survivor’s number in German so that he could respond to it at a roll call?’

What is also troubling is that the story of Mr Avey’s swap is almost identical to that told by another former PoW at camp E715 called Charles Coward.
In a post-war trial, Coward gave testimony — now widely discredited by Holocaust scholars — in which he claimed to have smuggled himself into Auschwitz by swapping places with a Jewish inmate. This tall tale is included in a book about Coward’s exploits which is called The Password Is Courage and billed on the jacket as The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz — the very same title as Avey’s book.
The chance that two British PoWs both independently thought up the life-endangering idea to swap places with an inmate of Auschwitz for the night stretches credibility to breaking point.
The similarity between the two tales also raises the question of why Mr Avey took so long to speak about his wartime experiences. It was in 2001 that Mr Avey’s experiences at E715 first appeared, featuring in a book called Spectator In Hell by Colin Rushton, a poet and historian.
Mr Avey revealed much that was traumatic, including an incident in which he lost an eye after being pistol-whipped by an SS officer, and the deaths of 38 PoWs in an Allied bombing raid. But he never once mentioned the swap.
On July 16, 2001, Mr Avey gave a five-hour interview to the Imperial War Museum in which he spoke about his incarceration, as well as the psychological impact of the war and his problems with nightmares. Not once in this interview did Mr Avey talk about smuggling himself into Monowitz.

In September 2004 and January 2005, Avey was interviewed by the journalist Diarmuid Jeffreys for his book Hell’s Cartel. He mentioned the pistol-whipping incident but again failed to talk about the swap or about Ernst or Hans.
Only in 2009, in an interview with the BBC journalist Rob Broomby, did Mr Avey first mention that he had smuggled himself into Auschwitz III. And Rob Broomby went on to co-write the book that has now appeared.
Mr Broomby has explained that Mr Avey left it so long to tell the story because he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when he came back from the war.
Why, then, was he able to talk about all those other experiences of the war in the preceding years?
Professor Kenneth Waltzer, the director of the Jewish Studies Program at Michigan State University and a world authority on the Nazi concentration camps, is sceptical: ‘The pattern of sustained silence, despite interviews, and then the tumbling out of the story does indeed raise suspicions.’
Mr Avey’s former fellow PoW, Brian Bishop, is more scathing: ‘Why does he start telling this story now? I don’t understand why all these stories are coming out now. It looks like they’re waiting for everybody to die and then no one can contradict them.’

As well as being traumatised, Mr Avey also claims that his reticence was born from the fact that the military authorities did not want to hear his story after the war — according to him, the mood among the authorities was one of wanting to move on and not wishing to hear about the horrors of the camp.
However, the opposite seems to be the case. In 1947, Mr Avey was approached by American prosecutors via the War Office to ask if he would like to make an affidavit of his experiences to help build a case in a war crimes trial. But he declined.
This week, Mr Avey was unable to explain the inconsistencies in his story. When asked why he did not mention the swap to the Imperial War Museum, he said: ‘I don’t know why. I didn’t choose to establish it then. But what I wrote in the book is the truth. I don’t have to defend it. I don’t mind what anybody says. I know what I’ve done.’
His co-writer, Rob Broomby, was also unable to confirm whether Mr Avey’s story of the swap was actually true. ‘It’s very difficult to verify at this stage,’ he said. ‘You’re not going to find people 70 years afterwards. It’s only when you’ve spent time with Denis that you know what he’s like.
‘This is not footnoted academic history. You have to look into the man’s eyes and know what sort of man this is.’
There are some who think it inappropriate to question the words of an elderly man — Mr Avey is now 92. But it is vital that stories such as that of Mr Avey are subjected to proper scrutiny.
As none other than the late Ernst Lobethal wrote to the New York Times in February 1994: ‘I think it is important to point out inaccuracies, lest Holocaust revisionists do it for us.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1J0YOjDvE

So Yad Vashem have refused to make him righteous amongst the nations! Even they realise that this bizarre story is too absurd for their fantasy story.

What is interesting is how various groups and people say that stories such as this gives ammunition to holocaust deniers, in fact the real reason this story has jewish groups and Dr Setkiewicz shitting themselves is because it will produce more holocaust revisionists and not just provide evidence to those who currently know the truth.

[Kingfisher]

"Millions" died there. They obviously didn't ask the Auschwitz museum.

But neither, unfortunately, will the Daily Mail reader, so they'll just take it at face value, and the legend will live on.

[simon1003]

After re-reading it there're a delightful couple of paragraphs:

"Mr Avey claims the clothes he borrowed from the Jewish inmate were infested with lice. This detail is doubted by former inmate Sam Pivnik. ‘We were made to be scrupulously clean at all times in Auschwitz III work-camps, and you risked a severe beating if you got dirty,’ Pivnik says.

‘The SS were terrified of typhus outbreaks and the prisoners’ uniforms, bedding and barracks were endlessly disinfected and deloused.’

The only thing missing is what the 'bedding and barracks' were 'endlessly disinfected and deloused' with. Have any of the posters here got any idea as to what delousing methods he can mean?

[astro3]

AVEY'S HOLOHOAX STORY CRUMBLES
From an Amazon review:

Avey's claim to have entered Auschwitz III rests on his own unsupported testimony. The Head of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum is reported as doubting that he did so.

The rights to the book sold for a six-figure sum. The cover of the U.S. edition shows famous view of the railway line going through the gate of Auschwitz Birkenau. The camp Avey broke into was a few kilometers to the east. For the publishers dramatic effect comes before strict accuracy.

The story did run on the prestigious BBC, after they had first sat on it for six years. The BBC is publicly-funded and they ran it at a time when it was very helpful to the prime minister, Gordon Brown, who was launching his `British Hero of the Holocaust' award, shortly before a general election. It is perfectly true that the BBC authenticated a part of Avey's story and the thinking seems to have been that because part was verified the rest should be accepted.

I would normally expect a tougher standard from the BBC, especially in this area. as a number of holocaust stories have been presented as true but subsequently discredited, giving succour to Holocaust-deniers. Avey's claim to have broken into Auschwitz III requires searching scrutiny, I am not confident that it received it. I should be very glad if the BBC can say on what basis they accepted Avey's story. If Avey is sincere in his desire that his story should `do some good' he will surely not object to some tough questioning, assuming his publishers allow.

I do not mean to say that Avey's claim to have entered Auschwitz III is not true, but wish simply to question the level of scrutiny it received.

Readers might wish to know that Avey is not the first person to claim to have entered Auschwitz III. Major Charles Coward made the same claim, which is detailed in The Password Is Courage and that Coward is described, prominently, on the back cover of the current edition of that book as 'The Man who broke into Auschwitz'. I did not see any mention of this in Avey's book.

The BBC may have a few questions to answer, about how they made Avey the hero of their 2009 Auschwitz 'docudrama.' Publisher Hodder & Stoughton may find themselves regretting their big advance sum.

I mean this joker could not even distinguish between Monowitz the great industrial centre, for armaments & especially buna rubber products, and the main Stammlager base-camp with its Arbeit Macht frei entrance gate - they were several miles apart.

[astro3]

comment by world Jewish Congress:
http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/n ... _auschwitz

A number of Shoah survivors, former prisoners and historians have cast doubt on Avey’s claim that he broke into Auschwitz, and the World Jewish Congress has called on his publishers, Hodder & Stoughton, to verify the historical accuracy of the book. “We are deeply concerned about the charges that a significant part of Mr. Avey’s story, i.e. that he supposedly smuggled himself into the Auschwitz-Buna concentration camp, may be exaggerated if not largely fabricated. If this book turns out to be the latest in a succession of false or partly fictionalized Holocaust tales, following on such hoaxes as Binjamin Wilkomirski’s 'Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood' and Herman Rosenblat’s 'Angel at the Fence', its publication could be a boon to Holocaust deniers and others who seek to trivialize or disparage the cataclysmic murder of more than 6,000,000 European Jews during World War II,” said WJC General Counsel Menachem Rosensaft in a statement.

[Dresden]

Here's an article by Carolyn Yeager about Denis Avey:

http://www.carolynyeager.com/Denis%20Avey_Righteous.htm

[astro3]

Here is Carolyn Yaeger's definitive statement:
http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2011/04/th ... overnment/

In the 'Inconvenient History' yournal,
'The Case Against Denis Avey, the BBC, and the British Government'
'The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz” is the product of a conspiracy to defraud.

[astro3]

BBC defends story even as it falls apart

My local bookshop is now promoting Avey's 20 quid book as promoted on TV (see program )
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-de ... e-13195733

For latest Caroline Yeager article, see here:
http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2011/04/wh ... let-it-go/
Why the BBC and Labor Government Cynically Backed the Denis Avey Holocaust Hoax, and why they won’t let it go

' The latest media/government/holo industry campaign has turned into a can of worms, but there is too much is at stake to retract it. Does the public enjoy being fed fairy tales that serve the interests of the power elite? The answer must be yes, especially when it’s the kind that plays well with those who long for the “glory of Britain” in a time when Britain is becoming increasingly non-British....

She explains how Avey could not even recall the name of the Auschwitz inmate he reckoned he swapped places with, to start with:

Here was a living human being in his late 80’s with a bold story, but no proof he was telling the truth. Avey apparently did not know the name of the Jewish prisoner he “traded places with” in the early telling of his tale. If he had, the BBC would have known where to look for the man

[Goethe]

Here's an article by Carolyn Yeager about Denis Avey:

http://www.carolynyeager.com/Denis%20Avey_Righteous.htm

From that link, Carolyn Yeager's summary of why people can't handle the truth is quite correct, though I do believe "ego" is part of it.

What drives it?

Why is it so easy to get people to believe this stuff? Many repeat the popular idea that folks don’t want to admit they have been fooled by what turns out to be, upon deeper study, obvious fairy tales. Thus they prefer to continue to believe it is true. I think the reason is more profound than that. It’s not ego. People instinctively realize that if the Holocaust is a hoax, much else that they have believed, and even cherished, must also be wrong. This turns their world upside-down, and everything must be re-examined. Rather than deal with that, they refuse to think about it. They decline to look at the evidence.

This is what people like Gordon Brown and the BBC count on. This is why they feel safe. Can we hope that enough people will be outraged by the fraud committed against us, and the money, our own money, spent to uphold it, that they will be willing to re-arrange their world view? That is the hope.

G.

[proxyserver]

comment by world Jewish Congress:
http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/n ... _auschwitz

A number of Shoah survivors, former prisoners and historians have cast doubt on Avey’s claim that he broke into Auschwitz, and the World Jewish Congress has called on his publishers, Hodder & Stoughton, to verify the historical accuracy of the book. “We are deeply concerned about the charges that a significant part of Mr. Avey’s story, i.e. that he supposedly smuggled himself into the Auschwitz-Buna concentration camp, may be exaggerated if not largely fabricated. If this book turns out to be the latest in a succession of false or partly fictionalized Holocaust tales, following on such hoaxes as Binjamin Wilkomirski’s 'Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood' and Herman Rosenblat’s 'Angel at the Fence', its publication could be a boon to Holocaust deniers and others who seek to trivialize or disparage the cataclysmic murder of more than 6,000,000 European Jews during World War II,” said WJC General Counsel Menachem Rosensaft in a statement.

Clearly, the Avery book is a plagiarisation of this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Password-Courag ... 0285635875 which was first published in 1954, and in 2001, I think, was republished, and, since I have a second-hand copy, I can say it is just absolute rubbish, even as far as the exterminationists would be concerned; and it is indeed the case that Sergeant Charles Coward, the purported subject of Castle's book, claimed to have broken into Auschwitz-Birkenau. Maybe, however, Avery got the idea from this movie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Password_Is_Courage

[astro3]

Shameless BBC promotion of Avey's book:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-de ... e-13195733
(they are normally supposed to have a policy of refusing to promote persons books)

In Twente in the Netherlands someone thinks they may know the identity of Hans, with whom Avey claimed to swap uniforms
http://www.tctubantia.nl/regio/almelo-s ... C3%ABr.ece
whilst his book is being comprehensively trashed by the Frankfurter Allgemeine
http://www.faz.net/s/RubBE163169B4324E2 ... ntent.html

[astro3]

Carolyn Yaeger's comments here - under her section, 'Holo Frauds and Quacks'

Denis Avey: The Man Who Would Be Righteous
http://carolynyeager.net/denis-avey-man ... -righteous
The Case Against Denis Avey, the BBC, and the British Government
http://carolynyeager.net/case-against-d ... government
Why the BBC and Labour Government Cynically Backed the Denis Avey Holocaust Hoax, and why they won't let it go
Quote:

Does the public enjoy being fed fairy tales that serve the interests of the power elite? The answer must be yes, especially when it's the kind that plays well with those who long for the "glory of Britain" in a time when Britain is becoming increasingly non-British. In order to soften the blow that via WWII the British not only lost their Empire but are losing their national sovereignty and also their racial distinctiveness, the alien government and media conspire to convince the people that doing so is a good and noble act … in Britain's "best tradition."

Carolyn has got a grip of the details of the story that don't stack up:

Here was a living human being in his late 80's with a bold story, but no proof he was telling the truth. Avey apparently did not know the name of the Jewish prisoner he "traded places with" in the early telling of his tale. If he had, the BBC would have known where to look for the man. Rob Broomby wrote in the March 16, 2010 BBC official newspaper Ariel (page 5), titled "How a BBC investigation found genuine 'Hero of the Holocaust" that it was only when someone sent them a copy of a video interview made by a certain Ernie Lobet before his death in 2001, in which he recalled a British soldier he knew only as 'Ginger' who had smuggled cigarettes and chocolate from England to him inside Auschwitz, that they made the connection to Avey.
Here we have a problem because cigarettes, and maybe even chocolate at times, could be purchased in all the camps. In the Monowitz camp, working conditions were quite tolerable, and the Red Cross delivered packages to Jewish inmates right up to the point when Allied bombers began destroying all transports within Germany. If Lobethal knew where his sister lived (as he said he told Avey), he could himself have asked the Red Cross to look her up and ask her to send him packages. Although, it may have been a difficult request to fulfill since the BBC, with all its resources, could not find Lobethal's sister Susana in the 2000's until they went on a house-to-house search for her in person. Yet we're to believe it was easy for Avey's mother to contact her during the war.

http://carolynyeager.net/why-bbc-and-la ... -let-it-go
Known Pedophile is Instrumental in Promoting Holocaust Hoaxer and Plagiarizer Denis Avey's New Book
http://carolynyeager.net/known-pedophil ... s-new-book
This bit is quite heavy stuff: Lord Janner is thanked by Avey in the book. He evades prosecution despite absolutely clear evidence, the guy testifying against him mysteriously dies just before the trial, and yes he just happens to be a j**.
Avey book heavily discounted as soon as it appears in bookstores
http://carolynyeager.net/avey-book-heav ... bookstores
As she says, "This is a just another cheap “holo fiction” that the publishers are hoping, given enough time, might become another Night."

[Carolyn Yeager]

http://carolynyeager.net/why-bbc-and-la ... -let-it-go
Known Pedophile is Instrumental in Promoting Holocaust Hoaxer and Plagiarizer Denis Avey's New Book
http://carolynyeager.net/known-pedophil ... s-new-book
This bit is quite heavy stuff: Lord Janner is thanked by Avey in the book. He evades prosecution despite absolutely clear evidence, the guy testifying against him mysteriously dies just before the trial, and yes he just happens to be a j**.
Avey book heavily discounted as soon as it appears in bookstores
http://carolynyeager.net/avey-book-heav ... bookstores
As she says, "This is a just another cheap “holo fiction” that the publishers are hoping, given enough time, might become another Night."

Thanks for the attention to these articles, Astro. Guy Walters has come out with another hit piece against Avey, but not in the Daily Mail this time. He's reduced to the New Statesman online. http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/guy-w ... -auschwitz


I talked about this new article by Walters at the beginning of my Jan. 2 Heretics' Hour program. (http://reasonradionetwork.com/20120102/ ... old-themes) The Avey book, now in paperback in Britain, is apparently once again a "best seller" there. But not anywhere else, I don't think. The Brits want heroes to be proud of and refuse to see him as the liar he is. Walters makes the tie to the interview Avey gave to the Imperial War Museum in 2001, in which he told a quite different story. And his story continued to change and develop between 2001 and 2010-11, as new information became available.

This is such a perfect example of the collaboration on Holocaust issues by the governments, politicians and high-level Jews and their organizations, including the memorial museums! That's what makes Avey -- who is just another hack otherwise -- important. Walters and his two friends should be encouraged to keep it up.

Unfortunately, Walters always has to keep up the pretense(?) of believing in the Holo story, and that the hoaxters do damage to it.

[astro3]

New Statesman article by Guy Walters demands:
'The bestselling Holocaust memoir by Denis Avey should be withdrawn from publication'.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/guy-w ... -auschwitz

Over the weekend, the Sunday Times reported that Denis Avey, the author of the memoir The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, had changed important elements of his story before his bestselling book was published. According to the article, Avey's account of how he had bravely swapped places with a Jew to enter into Auschwitz was radically different from an interview he had given to the Imperial War Museum in July 2001.
In the taped interview, Denis Avey claimed that he had gained entry to Auschwitz-Birkenau by swapping places with an unnamed "stripey" -- as British prisoners of war (POWs) called the Jewish inmates on account of their striped uniforms -- and had been accompanied by a Jew called Ernst. However, in the published book, Avey claims that he broke into Auschwitz-Monowitz (a camp about four miles from Birkenau), swapped places with a Dutch Jew called Hans, and that the man who accompanied him was not "Ernst".
One does not need to be a Holocaust historian to appreciate that these are important differences of fact.

This is it, the final stake through the heart:

Despite the assertion by the Sunday Times that this evidence is new, the catalogue of problems with Avey's story was highlighted by myself and my co-authors, Jeremy Duns and Adrian Weale, in the pages of the Daily Mail some seven months ago. Furthermore, we informed Avey's publishers, Hodder & Stoughton, in May of the existence of no fewer than eight differing versions Avey has given of his celebrated "swap", including the one given to the Imperial War Museum as well as accounts in the Daily Mirror and the Times.

'Yet another discredited Holocaust memoir:'
The person Avey swapped with was a 'stoker,' as in 'he stoked the crematoria for twelve months' - sure, pull the other one.
Guy Walters:

The supposed stoker to whom Avey refers is Donald Watt, who published a book about his experiences in 1995. Unfortunately for Avey, that book has been widely shown to be yet another discredited Holocaust memoir.

Comments posted
My favourite comment posted below this article is by Carolyn Yaeger - she replies to an Ex-servicemant 'John T' who comments, what if 80 year old Avey's memory is a bit rusty, can't you see he's honest?

To John T especially -
Denis Avey is LYING. Rob Broomby and the BBC are helping him to do it, in conjunction with the HET and the British (Labour) Government. And of course Hodder and Stoughton. For some it's money; for others, it's more Jewish holocaust propaganda, or another "British Hero" from that very unheroic British war. In the end, they fought the war from the air, creating firestorms for German civilians to roast in. I know your misplaced, anti-German patriotism doesn't want to hear that.
There is no way, if you listen to what Guy Walters is telling you, that you can honestly accept any of what Avey says, including his accounts of witnessing atrocities by the SS, i.e. killing people for no reason. It just didn't happen.
The "argument" that he is an old man and should be treated with respect by pretending to believe him or giving him the benefit of the doubt is ridiculous in the extreme. As an old man who has carried resentment over the years for not being accorded the respect or *compensation* as a veteran and PoW he felt he deserved, he should be given counseling and comfort, maybe, but not credibility. He is being used by the others in this unsavoury mix as much as he is using them.
Well, you are all British folks posting here and love your WWII fables. I commend Guy Walters and his fellow writers for at least going after the worst of the worst ... for Britain's sake.

HET = Holocaust Educational Trust