The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz is the title of a claimed autobiographical, but later classified as semi-autobiographical and semi-fictional book by Denis Avey, who is a recipient of a British Hero of the Holocaust award.

He describes how he exchanged uniforms with a Jewish inmate of Auschwitz III in order to enter this camp to discover more about conditions there, with a view to reporting these to the authorities after the war.

Rob Broomby was able to trace Lobethal's sister Susanne and her son had a copy of a video recording which her brother had made before his death for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education in which he describes how a British POW known as 'Ginger' smuggled the cigarettes to him and how these saved his life by enabling him to exchange them for food and to have new soles put on his boots which enabled him to survive the death march.

Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, head of research at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum told Reuters that he does not think the swap described in the book ever happened.

Setkiewicz added that Avey's description of Auschwitz III does not conform to known facts about it, beginning with the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign upon its entrance, which almost certainly did not exist.