Review
The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz has an eye-catching title and jacket copy, but each does the author a disservice. The exchange highlighted so prominently encompasses only 15 pages of the narrative, and it's a bit of a letdown compared to the rest of the author's experiences. The book is actually a gripping war-time memoir that covers Denis Avey's entire military service, from the time he enlists in the Rifle Brigade in 1939 through his repatriation more than five years later. The reader follows him as he fights in the deserts of Africa, is wounded and captured, and is transported to Europe on a ship that is torpedoed by Allied forces along the way. Later he is imprisoned, escapes, is recaptured, and eventually sent on a railway cattle car to labor camp E715 where he performs slave labor alongside Jewish prisoners in the I.G. Farben Buna-Werke industrial complex. Also relayed...
Beyond the Book
Auschwitz was a huge complex that covered 40 square kilometers (25 square miles) near the town of Oswiecim, Poland. It was comprised of three sections: Auschwitz I, the base camp and central office; Auschwitz II, aka Birkenau, a concentration camp and crematorium; and Auschwitz III, aka Monowitz or Monowitz-Buna, a labor camp adjacent to a factory owned by IG Farben Industries where synthetic fuel and rubber were produced.
IG Farben Industries was a German firm formed in 1925 by the merger of six separate companies. Originally specializing in dyes, the company branched out into synthetics,...
