The Observer – England’s oldest newspaper – today printed a ‘Holocaust’ revisionist article: a brief but forensic examination casting doubt on eyewitness testimony.
Perhaps it helped that the ‘eyewitness’ in question wasn’t Jewish: he can therefore be acknowledged as potentially fallible and perhaps even dishonest.
Doubts about this ‘eyewitness’ – British prisoner-of-war Denis Avey – had surfaced eleven years ago soon after publication of his book, The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz. The fact that it has taken more than a decade for his publisher even to admit these doubts about Avey’s tale is an extraordinary reflection on the quasi-religious reverence accorded to ‘Holocaust’ testimonies.
And the saga also reflects badly on leading figures in the ‘Holocaust’ industry.
Denis Avey was a British soldier captured at the age of 21 while fighting in North Africa. He spent time in several prisoner-of-war camps in Italy and Germany, and eventually in the autumn of 1943 was sent to the E715 camp near Monowitz, part of the Auschwitz camp complex.
It’s not disputed that Avey was one of numerous British prisoners who worked at the Buna Works, a factory making artificial rubber that also employed large numbers of Jewish prisoners.
But from the end of the 1990s Avey started to embroider stories about his time as a prisoner, notably a tale that he had smuggled himself into Auschwitz by exchanging clothes with a Jewish prisoner. Some of these stories were first published in 2001 as part of a book of Auschwitz reminiscences called Spectator in Hell, by Colin Rushton (no relation to the present author), but the story about smuggling himself into the camp did not appear in that first account.
In fact this most sensational aspect of the story did not appear until 2009, but eventually Avey’s tale was accompanied by the usual lurid details. In 2010 for example he told Jewish journalist Jake Wallis Simons in an interview for The Times:
“The Stripeys – that’s what we called the Jewish prisoners — were in a terrible state. Within months they were reduced to waifs and then they disappeared. The stench from the crematoria was appalling, civilians from as far away as Katowice were complaining. Everybody knew what was going on. Everybody knew.”
Avey went on to tell Simons (who is now editor of the Jewish Chronicle and has close connections to the Israeli intelligence services):
“Evidence would be vital. Of course, sneaking into the Jewish camp was a ludicrous idea. It was like breaking into Hell. But that’s the sort of chap I was. Reckless.”
Ever eager for “eyewitness” testimony, the Holocaust industry promoted Avey assiduously. Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2010, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown met Avey and honoured him with one of the UK’s first ‘Hero of the Holocaust’ medals.
Prime Minister Brown said “it is people like Denis Avey and his extraordinary acts of kindness and compassion for others, that give us hope for the future. …It is a remarkable tale of a truly remarkable man.”
Lord Janner – since disgraced as a paedophile but at that time the leading spokesman for the British Jewish community and chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, agreed: “Denis Avey is a hero. He risked tremendous personal danger at Auschwitz to learn exactly what went on in that terrible place, and at the Holocaust Educational Trust we work to ensure that his efforts were not in vain – and that all young people learn about, remember and pass on to others the lessons of the horrors of the Holocaust.”
A year later Avey worked with a BBC journalist and (significantly) a novelist to produce his book, The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, which contained a foreword by Britain’s leading ‘Holocaust’ historian and Churchill biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert.
“The honesty of this book heightens its impact,” Sir Martin wrote. “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.”
Yet within weeks of publication, some more careful readers were casting serious doubt on Avey’s account. There were numerous troubling errors and inconsistencies.
For example, Avey tells his credulous readers that as he entered the Monowitz (or ‘Auschwitz III’ camp) he passed under the famous sign Arbeit macht Frei (‘Work makes you free’). Yet there was no such sign in Monowitz – it was at the Auschwitz I camp six miles away, which Avey does not claim to have visited. In another version of his tale Avey claimes it was the Auschwitz II camp that he smuggled himself into – i.e. Birkenau – and he adds the obligatory details about homicidal gas chambers, the stench of crematoria, and the claim that “everyone knew” about mass murders at the camp.
One fellow British prisoner-of-war astutely questioned Avey’s motives: “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.”
But Avey’s co-author, BBC journalist Rob Broomby, responded with the usual line peddled by mainstream ‘Holocaust’ historians when they are caught out on matters of detail: “It’s very difficult to verify at this stage. 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.”
In other words, as 34 leading historians wrote in a joint letter published in Le Monde on 21st February 1979, responding to factual challenges from pioneering revisionist scholar Professor Robert Faurisson:
“One should not ask, how this mass murder was made possible. It was technically possible, because it happened. This has to be the obligatory starting-point for any historical research regarding this topic. We would just like to remind you: There is no debate regarding the existence of the gas chambers, and there can never be one.”
For years Denis Avey was a useful weapon for the Holocaust industry. As the Jewish Chronicle put it in an article that remains online: “As survivors pass away and Holocaust deniers try to peddle their fiction, he has an unstoppable urge to talk about his experiences.”
Several reputable journalists and historians expressed their doubts (and effectively exposed Avey’s book as a work of fiction) in 2011 – notably Guy Walters in the Daily Mail. Yet it is only now, eleven years after his book and almost seven years after his death, that his publishers Hodder & Stoughton are under pressure to revise future editions of The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz.
One disturbing aspect is that parts of Avey’s tale are identical to stories told by another British prisoner Charles Coward, who similarly was believed and gave prosecution evidence at the Nuremberg ‘war crimes’ trial. At the same time as honoring Avey in 2010, the British government posthumously honoured Charles Coward as a ‘Hero of the Holocaust’.
How many such ‘eyewitness’ heroes were actually fantasists? If not liars motivated by financial gain, perhaps people who sincerely believed they had seen things that could not possibly have happened?
With any normal historical topic, the answer would be to examine the documentary record – especially now that some of the records of British intelligence services are becoming available.
And that’s exactly what is now happening with a new book to be published in association with this website. Keep reading the Real History blog to learn more about this project.
