The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz is the extraordinary true story of a British soldier who marched willingly into Buna-Monowitz, the concentration camp known as Auschwitz III.

In the summer of 1944, Denis Avey was being held in a POW labour camp, E715, near Auschwitz III.

He had heard of the brutality meted out to the prisoners there and was determined to witness what he could.

He hatched a plan to swap uniforms with a Dutch Jewish inmate and smuggled himself into his sector of the camp.

Avey smuggled himself into Auschwitz twice, using the cigarettes and chocolate from Red Cross packages to bribe guards.

A BBC article explaining why he risked his life notes that "when Avey was told about the mass killings and smelled the horrendous stench from nearby crematoriums he vowed to witness the atrocities for himself.

“… with the risk of almost certain death, he broke into the deadly camp and witnessed for himself the 'vaguely human' corpses piling up each day."

Avey says that “despite the danger, I knew I had to bear witness”.

He spent the night there on two occasions and experienced at first-hand the cruelty of a camp where slave workers had been sentenced to death through labour.

He survived to witness the aftermath of the infamous Death March where thousands of prisoners were murdered by the Nazis as the Soviet Army advanced.

After his own long trek across central Europe he was repatriated to Britain. But for decades he couldn't bring himself to revisit the past.

The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz by Denis Avey with Rob Broomby is a 2011 first edition published by Hodder & Stoughton, London.

It is a 263-page 15.5x24cm soft cover in great condition with some interesting photographs.

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