Reporter Danny Carden was invited to join the students on their emotional journey to Poland.

Project leaders stressed that no-one could be fully prepared for the emotional onslaught of experiencing Auschwitz at first hand.

Judging from the looks on students' faces as they toured the camp where more than 1.1million people were murdered, they were right.

But the Holocaust Educational Trust had not brought more than 200 East Midlands children to the camp to scare or shock them.

Its Lessons from Auschwitz project aimed to highlight the dangers presented when society allows violence, prejudice and racism to become acceptable, and show students how such atrocities can be avoided in the future.

Students Chris Tooley and Claire Richards, from Ecclesbourne School, were among those stepping off the bus on a bitterly cold morning in the pretty village of Oswiecim – renamed Auschwitz in the 1930s by its German occupiers.

They joined fellow students in choking back tears as they listened to tales from the camp and viewed tragic exhibitions, including huge piles of shoes, photographs of starving inmates and gruesome instruments of torture, humiliation and death.

Historian Stewart Bennett told them: "The grass you are standing on was once the site of a 3,000-person synagogue, but now there are no Jews in this town.

"The Nazis wanted to destroy the Jewish community, wipe them from the face of the earth, and in a way they have been successful here."

His words rammed home that this was going to be a challenging and eye-opening day.

Swans swam along the River Vistula in the town's snow-cloaked park, as pupils heard how the area became the scene of the most shocking acts in human history.

Rabbi Barry Marcus described how the river's blue waters were once stained grey by the ashes of gassed and burned Jews.

After leaving Oswiecim, students visited Auschwitz Camp One and the infamous Birkenau death camp, home of "doctor of death" Dr Josef Mengele, who performed brutal surgeries and experiments on people in the camp.

There were more chilling sights around every corner – mass gallows, scarred execution walls and an entire room of empty poison gas canisters.

Chris, 17, said: "It's been a bit overwhelming as we've seen lots of serious stuff in such a short space of time, so it has been hard to take in. It's hard to come to terms with the fact that thousands of people died right here."

Claire, 16, said: "It's been overwhelming as there's so much at once. Seeing shoes smaller than my hand left behind, knowing what happened to the child which wore it, is hard to take.

"But I'm so glad to be on the trip to get a deeper knowledge of the issues and what happened here."

As they prepared to board the plane home, every student I spoke to said they were returning with renewed determination to fight discrimination, to ensure such an atrocity cannot happen in their lifetime.



A cruel place with no colour and no hope


AUSCHWITZ is a truly unnerving place. There is no sound. No hope. And no colours, bar the brown and grey of huts and wire which litter the skyline as far as the eye can see.

I had imagined Auschwitz to be a cruel and inhumane prison. The reality is much worse.

Very few of the victims transported to the camps lived longer than a couple of days. Most were not even registered as inmates.

If you were unfit to work long days doing hard labour in awful conditions with little food, you would be killed.

The photos of women and children – unaware of what was about to happen –being 'sorted' from their husbands, friends, fathers and grandfathers were gut-wrenching.

When cloaked in snow and in temperatures of minus ten as it was during our trip, it was hard to imagine a worse place on earth. We learned how the Nazis turned death into an industry.

They killed around 1.1million people in Auschwitz's camps – around two-thirds of the population of my native Northern Ireland.

Victims' clothes, spectacles, jewellery, shoes, hair and even tooth fillings were taken and sent back to Germany to be sold, made into rugs or melted down. Even ashes were used as fertiliser.

Though the gas chambers could kill 1,400 at a time, it was only the problem of discarding bodies that stopped more people being slaughtered.

The Holocaust Educational Trust was careful to help pupils – who were thoughtful, interesting and well-mannered throughout – make sense of the horrific sites they were visiting.

Guides, leaders and historians were excellent in reiterating that these acts were caused by discrimination and we as humans have the power to stop this happening again.

They encouraged pupils to learn from their experiences and to find hope in the incredible bravery, dignity and faith shown by victims.

But I was left with a very different feeling. I tried, but saw no hope and was unable to draw positives from the place.

For me Auschwitz is simply a warning – a lasting monument to a disgraceful moment in human history.

Danny Carden


Chilling facts

• Slave labour at Auschwitz generated the equivalent of £125million in today's money for the Nazi state.

• Victims from as far as Norway and Italy were taken to Auschwitz to be detained or killed in its three camps and 45 satellite camps.

• Official records show only 144 people escaped.

• Jews, Polish political prisoners, Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people and prisoners of conscience or religious faith were all sent to Auschwitz.

• The Nazis documented their atrocities in records, photos and film, which has helped historians understand the Holocaust.

• Prisoners were allowed to bring 25-40kg of possessions, which were then confiscated and sent back to Germany.

• The Holocaust Educational Trust was launched in 1988 to educate young people about the Holocaust and the lessons to be learned.