Why the BBC and Labour Government Cynically Backed the Denis Avey Holocaust Hoax, and why they won't let it go

By Carolyn Yeager, April 2011
copyright Carolyn Yeager 2011

The latest media/government/holo industry campaign has turned into a can of worms, but there is too much is at stake to retract it.

Does the public enjoy being fed fairy tales that serve the interests of the power elite? The answer must be yes, especially when it's the kind that plays well with those who long for the "glory of Britain" in a time when Britain is becoming increasingly non-British. In order to soften the blow that via WWII the British not only lost their Empire but are losing their national sovereignty and also their racial distinctiveness, the alien government and media conspire to convince the people that doing so is a good and noble act … in Britain's "best tradition."

The Hoaxers: Denis Avey, the prize liar, is flanked by BBC producer Patrick Howse (left) and BBC World Service reporter Rob Broomby (right), at Number Ten Downing St. in London.

The two media men in the picture above admit they spent years hoping to verify the unlikely tale of Denis Avey, told by him to the BBC 60 years after the fact. They held on to it because for all mainstream government-connected media, new tales about the holocaust are worth their weight in gold.

Here was a living human being in his late 80's with a bold story, but no proof he was telling the truth. Avey apparently did not know the name of the Jewish prisoner he "traded places with" in the early telling of his tale. If he had, the BBC would have known where to look for the man. Rob Broomby wrote in the March 16, 2010 BBC official newspaper Ariel (page 5), titled "How a BBC investigation found genuine 'Hero of the Holocaust" that it was only when someone sent them a copy of a video interview made by a certain Ernie Lobet before his death in 2001, in which he recalled a British soldier he knew only as 'Ginger' who had smuggled cigarettes and chocolate from England to him inside Auschwitz, that they made the connection to Avey.

Here we have a problem because cigarettes, and maybe even chocolate at times, could be purchased in all the camps. In the Monowitz camp, working conditions were quite tolerable, and the Red Cross delivered packages to Jewish inmates right up to the point when Allied bombers began destroying all transports within Germany. If Lobethal knew where his sister lived (as he said he told Avey), he could himself have asked the Red Cross to look her up and ask her to send him packages. Although, it may have been a difficult request to fulfill since the BBC, with all its resources, could not find Lobethal's sister Susana in the 2000's until they went on a house-to-house search for her in person. Yet we're to believe it was easy for Avey's mother to contact her during the war.

Despite holes in the story, it is accepted

Avey and Susana Lobethal Timms both claim to have met "briefly" in 1945 when Denis returned from the war, according to Broomby. But Avey also says he was suffering from tuberculosis (highly contagious), exhaustion and post-traumatic stress and had to be hospitalized immediately and took two years to recover. I don't believe that these two ever met before the BBC got them together in October 2009. It's more likely that Howse and Broomby had met with Susana and she agreed to go along with the story, or simply agreed to the story. The explanation Avey and Timms give for not knowing each other-that "they lost touch" after 1945-is not persuasive. Susana would surely have made the effort to notify Avey that Ernst was alive, and then was moving to America, if all this were really true. If it were true, Ernst would want to thank the man who "saved his life" if his sister knew who the man was.

Avey claims he was known as 'Ginger' because of his red hair. He first said he traded places with a Jewish prisoner he had gotten to know in their common workplace (Lobethal), but later changed it to a "Dutch Jew named Hans" who died shortly afterward. Was it because Lobethal, in his testimony on the video, had said not a word about trading places in the barracks for a night? If he were involved in such a dramatic event, it would certainly not have slipped his mind. But Lobethal only told of being given cigarettes.

This, however, didn't deter Howse and Broomby from connecting dots that didn't exist. Lobethal's actual Shoah testimony is that a British PoW he knew as Ginger gave him 10 packs of cigarettes, and he used two packs to trade for heavy socks to wear with his boots. Avey's story is that Ernst got his shoes resoled. Broomby wrote in the Ariel promo linked to above that Lobethal said he traded cigarettes for "favours" which "enabled him to get his shoes resoled," and that "saved his life" But when I watched the video testimony, that's not what he said. In any case, this brings up the question that if conditions were as bad inside the Monowitz camp as Avey says, who is doing skilled labor like resoling shoes for prisoners whom Avey says were only waiting to die? In his testimony for the Shoah Foundation, Lobethal did not describe conditions in his camp and barracks the way that Avey does.

Avey was set up to be the next Schindler

Between 2003 and the time Lobethal's testimony was discovered, Avey was saying he had "broken into Auschwitz" and spent a couple of nights in the Jewish barracks to see what it was like. I don't know of him saying that he provided a special Jewish prisoner-friend with cigarettes. I think he said he used cigarettes to bribe his way into the Jewish barracks. I am skeptical that the Shoah Foundation video of Lobethal's testimony came to the BBC's attention after and not before they began their search for Susana Timms. Broomby avoids giving a clear timeline. It's possible that once they saw the Lobethal video, the two media men linked together the red-haired PoW Avey with Lobethal's 'Ginger'. It explains why they persevered in their search for Susana-she was the vital link (witness) necessary to tie the two men together.

Avey had already committed himself to the "breaking into Auschwitz" story; now he and the BBC added the "cigarettes-life-saving story" to that, even though Lobethal had said nothing about the former. The video of that part of Lobethal's testimony has been disabled from the original BBC article where it had appeared and I have not been able to find it on the Internet.

The BBC kept mentioning Oskar Schindler in connection with Denis Avey, for example here and here, hoping to build another huge holo-icon, only this time British, and also use the comparison to publicize the motion picture that is planned

The role of the Holocaust Education Trust

The strong backing of this powerful organization, with its sinister influence on British politics, is key to the whole Avey phenomenon. In his acknowledgements in the book, Avey thanks Lord Janner, Karen Pollack and the team at the Holocaust Education Trust (HET) for their ongoing help and support. "Their work is beyond value." He then thanks Gordon and Sarah Brown. Following this, a page is given over to The Holocaust Educational Trust to advertise its achievements and aim of making the Holocaust a permanent part of Britain's "collective memory."

On Jan. 25, 2010, when Avey first met with Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street, the Jewish Lord Janner was also in attendance. Janner proclaimed: "Denis Avey is a hero. He risked tremendous personal danger at Auschwitz to learn exactly what went on in that terrible place, and at the Holocaust Educational Trust we work to ensure that his efforts were not in vain - and that all young people learn about, remember and pass on to others the lessons of the horrors of the Holocaust."

The HET was set up by Labour politicians and is aligned with them. It works to ensure their reelection. Grenville Janner is a member of Labour, was an MP for a time, and was President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the main representative body of British Jewry, from 1978 to 1984. He has been a key international figure in efforts to seek compensation and restitution for Holocaust victims. Along with chairing the Holocaust Educational Trust, he is vice president of the World Jewish Congress. He was instrumental in arranging the 1997 London Nazi Looted Gold conference.

Janner received (bought?) a life peerage as Lord Janner of Braunstone in 1997 and since sits on the Labour benches in the British House of Lords. The president of HET is Steven Rubin. One of the things they do to intimidate British politicians is to place a "Book of Commitment" every Holocaust Memorial Day in the Houses of Parliament and "invite" members to sign it. By doing so, they "honour the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust and pay tribute to the bravery of those who risked their lives to help the persecuted" -in other words, the signees publicly affirm their belief in the Jewish Holocaust. HET takes pictures of the more prominent MPs signing the book, such as Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg … each looking properly somber and obedient. (You can see these pictures on the 5th page) Do you think any MP would dare to not sign the "Book of Commitment?"

On July 2, 2010, after the General Election, the HET hosted the MP's of all political parties, plus students and Holocaust survivors, at a special reception to mark the 10,000th participant in the 'Lessons from Auschwitz' government-funded trips for high school students. The event was held in the Houses of Parliament.

HET chairman Lord Janner, Education Secretary Michael Gove, Lessons from Auschwitz student ambassadors Jack Boyce and Nadia Caney

John Bercow MP, Speaker of the House of Commons and HET chief executive Karen Pollock at the July 2010 reception.

Karen Pollock, as HET's chief executive, writes regular essays published in the Guardian. Her Sunday May 17, 2009 opinion piece was devoted to the idea that if Yad Vashem in Israel honors "Righteous Gentiles" of many nationalities, these governments should also create an honor for them in their individual nations. There can't be too many holocaust awards-hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them is the desire of the Jewish organizations. The world will actually revolve around the "Holocaust" as the pivotal point in history; nothing will be more important.

Pollock began her essay with: "Finally the government is honoring British heroes who risked their lives to help Jews during the Holocaust" and ended it by reminding us, "As the European and local elections approach, we are again subjected to poisonous propaganda from the far right, who seek to extend an exclusive claim over "Britishness" and who purport to represent our country's heritage. But the hatred and division they peddle is the very antithesis of what Britain stands for."

This kind of propaganda is meant to shame Britishers into going along with the Jewish holocaust agenda. The very powerful Jews of Britian force holocaustianity down the throats of all British politicians, who don't seems to mind the taste of it, however.

Here is Karen Pollock again (right), under all the make-up, at an HET fundraiser in 2010 that featured Denis Avey as speaker and raised almost half a million pounds, with Hannah Loftus (left).

The all-important elections

After Prime Minister Gordon Brown's visit to Auschwitz on April 28, 2009 and prior to the June elections, the Telegraph newspaper reported that "Ministers are working on plans for a new award to honour British people who helped the Jews of Europe during the Holocaust. The medal or other award would recognize acts of courage for those who saved Jews or other persecuted groups during the darkest days of the Second World War." "Other persecuted groups" is added as a sop to the politicians, but in fact all those eventually chosen as 'Heroes of the Holocaust' aided Jews. Of course, the HET plays a major role in the selection.

Following this media publicity, the 2009 local elections and European Parliament elections were held on June 4 in England. In 2010, the 'Heroes of the Holocaust' awards ceremony took place at Downing Street on March 9. The publicity for the event highlighted Denis Avey's swap story. On April 6, campaigning began for the British General Election. On May 6, the General Election was held.

Does this not make it clear that some obeisance and slavish offerings to Holocaustianity must always precede the elections in order to get on the good side of the powerful Jews? But now that Labour is out of power, will the Conservatives carry on in the same way?

Efforts to defend against the criticism are appearing

A recent article in the New York Post uses the word "hoax" to report on the growing disbelief in Avey's bizarrely concocted story. The main objection most have is to the 'swap', which is necessary for the title of the book, The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz, and is not something that can be dropped from the story.

The New York Post reports that the U.S. publisher Perseus did not return their call about whether they would conduct an investigation into the accuracy of the book's claims. According to a reviewer of the book on Amazon UK, Hoddard & Staughton, the UK publisher, posted a rebuttal on their website on April 11 to Guy Walters' April 9 Daily Mail critical review, but it was subsequently taken down. Now, however, an April 26, 2011 article by Reuters' Mike Collett-White, tells of the publisher's "point-by-point rebuttal of the Daily Mail article by Guy Walters," but not where to find it. Hodderd & Staughton has since said it was "proud to publish" Avey's book, and that "We have never doubted Mr. Avey's testimony." Well, they are not experts either, are they? This is equal to Boston University President Robert Brown writing to me on Sept. 27, 2010 that he "has no doubt Wiesel is a survivor of the Holocaust" and further that Wiesel is "a man of integrity and would not stoop to fabrication." Naturally he must say that, but he does not really have any direct knowledge whatsoever to base it on.

Hoddard & Staughton also said it responded with a "detailed explanation" to a fax from the World Jewish Congress asking to have the book verified. That explanation has not been made public either.

Rob Broomby issued a new statement: "I am certainly not distancing myself from the book at all. I stand by everything in the book." Good luck to him. Avey told Broomby that while the Walters' article is "deeply unpleasant … I stand by my account. It is a fact." A fact? Real facts are being ignored, while the issue is presented as being about taking an Englishman at his word.

On April 26 (yesterday as I write this), the BBC is carrying a Derbyshire story that Denis Avey is "searching for information about the Dutchman named Hans" with whom he exchanged clothing in the camp in Poland! The short notice says he is trying to find out what happened to "the other people involved in his story." This is really bizarre, a transparent and desperate tactic dreamed up by his co-author Rob Broomby and his publishers, perhaps. Will some cooperative soul crop up saying, Oh yes, I remember good old Hans writing to me about this escapade before I never heard from him again? Or maybe another "survivor" will suddenly appear and recall something about it. It does point out what Avey and the BBC should have been doing much earlier. But, of course, they didn't expect to be faced with this problem. Solutions are devised as problems arise.

The principals of the hoax are circling the wagons around them. The message is clear: they will do their utmost to survive the attacks that are coming. They have the media on their side, which is a giant advantage. And already the detractors are toning down their words. Piotr Setkiewicz, head of research at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, told Collet-White, "Perhaps 80 or 90 percent of what Mr. Avey says is true, but the problem is that deniers have this wonderful habit of fixing on every single thing which is obviously not true." It's certain that 80 percent of what Avey says is NOT true; one would have to go carefully through the book, but I'd be surprised if 40 percent is true. Additionally, Sekiewicz uses that odd language that calls someone who "fixes on what is not true" a denier! It has to follow that someone who does not pay attention to what is obviously not true is a believer.

Plenty of precedent for the Avey hoax phenomenon

The NY Post article mentions three of the well-known fictional "true stories" written by fake WWII camp survivors, but there are many books written by real camp survivors that are also mostly or partly fiction. One is The Password is Courage about Charles Coward, the first man who broke into Auschwitz, and who is the model for Avey's copy-cat bravado. Avey's insistence that his purpose is to "witness" is strangely similar to the sentiments of another self-appointed witness, Elie Wiesel, whose book Night is also a bizarre concoction by someone who wasn't there. There are no records in Auschwitz-Birkenau or Buchenwald for Elie Wiesel or his father, nor does Wiesel have the famous tattoo on his arm. He, like Avey, waited to hear the stories of other people before he wrote his own, and his book also doesn't jive with the official reality (or even physical reality) in several important places.

Holocaust literature is so full of fakes that are protected by the 'holocaust industry' and media that this Industry must now be vigilant against the most outrageous new fakes so as not to draw attention to the fakery in the old ones (as I just did above). This is the concern of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and the World Jewish Congress. The Yad Vashem Memorial Museum in Jerusalem has said it will definitely not be awarding Avey the "Righteous of the Nations" title. New holocaust memoirs by men and women who decided to write them after a lifetime of silence should be discounted right off the bat. They are money-making or glory-making ventures, as cynical as it gets.

Cui Bono-Who Benefits?

The British Holocaust Education Trust should also be concerned about the fakery they have promoted, but they are too deep into it and have no one else at whom they can point the finger. Passing off the blame is always necessary, a form of 'plausible denial.' The same goes for the BBC and the Labour Party and government of Gordon Brown-they were too anxious to force this story into the public consciousness for their own political gain without regard for its obvious falsity. But when have those benefiting from the holocaust been concerned with truthfulness?

Rob Broomby is guilty of personally accepting and seeking to profit from this hoax, along with Patrick Howse. The book's publishers had a great deal to gain, but now have a great deal to lose. They will do all they can to blunt the criticism. This is why the criticism must continue, and become ever more widely sourced … as well as louder and more demanding.

To show that even the guilty cannot help but speak the truth at times, it's utterly appropriate that Broomby reports that Avey is fond of saying to Howse and himself, "It's you two who opened this can of worms." How very apt. A can of worms indeed is what it is.