wfgodot
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A very good and lengthy Daily Mail story questions the account of a British PoW; if exposed as a falsehood, Denis Avey would join in the line of writers of recent accounts which have been discredited - Mischa Defonseca, Herman Rosenblat, et al.
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?
University of Kent sociolgist Frank Furedi on false memoirs, including
Mischa Defonseca's: Fake Holocaust memoirs: history as therapy
New York Times on Herman Rosenblat: False Memoir of Holocaust Is Canceled
The jury, of course, is still out on Mr Avey's account, and the case raises many issues.
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?
However, after the book was published and Avey awarded numerous honors, his account has been questioned: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.
(much more, including pictures, at Daily Mail link above)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.
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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.
University of Kent sociolgist Frank Furedi on false memoirs, including
Mischa Defonseca's: Fake Holocaust memoirs: history as therapy
New York Times on Herman Rosenblat: False Memoir of Holocaust Is Canceled
The jury, of course, is still out on Mr Avey's account, and the case raises many issues.