It started with an extraordinary tale of wartime bravery and led to the publication of a bestselling account, The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, and to a BBC documentary. Then the difficult questions began. Were the heroic exploits of Denis Avey really all they seemed? Was his dramatic claim he had swapped places with a man inside a concentration camp possibly a fake?
In spite of growing doubts, Avey’s story that he saved the life of a Jewish prisoner by placing himself in danger while he was being held in a prisoner-of-war sub-camp near Auschwitz is still in popular currency.
