This remarkable work is the story of Denis Avey who served as a British soldier in WWII in the Western Desert of North Africa, was captured, escaped, walked through Greece and much of Italy, was captured again, escaped again - and finally wound up as a POW of the Germans at Auschwitz III, or Buna-Monowitz as it was also known. Mr Avey was assisted by Rob Broomby in writing the book, and Avey freely admits that Mr Broomby kept him under control - he loves telling his story, in every little detail!
Denis Avey is in his 90s now. With the assistance of his fine memory, Rob Broomby, various researchers, archives and editors, his story comes alive. We go with the young man through his happy youth in England, army training in Liverpool, travel by ship - with constant fear of German submarines - to Egypt, and then follow him through a ghastly period in the Western Desert. I had never quite understood the battle plans of that time, but thanks to Denis Avey I have a good understanding now. First the Allies battled against the Italians, and this was a doddle compared to the eventual war against the highly organized Germans. Avey saw friends killed, was ultimately wounded himself, and was cared for in a German hospital where he gained the [false] idea that Rommel's Afrika Corps was morally superior to the rest of Hitler's people. What Denis Avey did not know was that the Afrika Corps, with Arab approval, brought with it one of Hitler's Einsatzgruppen for the mission of murdering all civilian Jews behind the lines when Rommel was victorious - which, of course, he wasn't. Avey ended up as a POW in German hands, at the POW camp right next to the concentration camp in Poland called Auschwitz III: Buna Monowitz, a gigantic industrial plant belonging to I G Farben who were intent on inventing and manufacturing an artificial rubber for use in the war.
The Geneva Convention meant nothing to the Nazis, and POWs were put to work, hard labour in fact, at the I G Farben plant. On his first day, Denis wondered at the thousands of skeletal figures dressed in striped "pyjamas" who swarmed all over the site. He learnt that they were Jewish slave labourers, was appalled at their pitiful state, at the way guards treated them, at the shootings, at the number who died of exhaustion and starvation each day on the work site, and slowly he resolved to somehow see the inside of Auschwitz III; not merely the inside of the POW camp. While this resolution was forming, he managed to substantially help a Jewish prisoner, with the assistance of his own mother back in England and the prisoner's sister, also in England. It makes a fascinating story. Ultimately Denis managed to get inside the barracks of Auschwitz III, on two occasions. Again, this needs to be read, not told by some reviewer, and the story is sad, depressing and horrifying. Not to mention frightening.
After the war, Denis was close to a mental breakdown for a very long time. He found that no-one was interested in his story, or in what had happened to Europe's Jewish population. For decades he said nothing, but Auschwitz did not leave his thoughts or his nightmares. Eventually, when the world began being ready to listen, Denis found he could not stop talking. He talked wherever and whenever he was asked to do so.
Directly post-war he had managed to find the sister of the Jewish internee he had helped, but he himself was in a terrible state at the time and could not speak coherently with her. When he eventually began talking and decided to make his story into a book, part of the endeavour was to once again find this Jewish woman. That part of the book, the search for this lady, becomes tedious, as every detail is closely gone into. One forgives Denis Avey, however, as it is easy to sense that he simply HAS to tell every word of his remarkable story.
The conclusion of his history is amazing and extremely moving. I loved this book, and grew to love the man telling the story.
