A remarkable British solider in the Second World War, Denis Avey, smuggled himself into Auschwitz so he could tell the world the truth:
Now 91 and living in Derbyshire, he says he wanted to witness what was going on inside and find out the truth about the gas chambers, so he could tell others. He knows he took “a hell of a chance”.
“When you think about it in today’s environment it is ludicrous, absolutely ludicrous,” he says.
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“There were nearly three million human beings worked to death in different factories,” says Mr Avey. “They knew at that rate they’d last about five months.
“They very seldom talk about their civil life. They only talked about the situation, the punishments they were getting, the work they were made to do.”
He says he would ask where people he’d met previously had gone and he would be told they’d “gone up the chimney”.
“It was so impersonal. Auschwitz was evil, everything about it was wrong.”