STUDENTS from King Edward VI College in Stourbridge were among more than 200 sixth formers from across the UK who made the heart-wrenching journey to Auschwitz this year.

The visit, writes Megan Austin, was part of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz Course – which for more than a decade has been promoting greater awareness in schools of the Holocaust and its lessons in today’s society.

Before the visit to Poland, we attended a seminar and discussed our expectations of the trip and what we knew and thought of the Holocaust and had the opportunity to listen to a Holocaust survivor’s testimony.

However, the fundamental premise behind the Holocaust Educational Trust’s visits is that seeing is different to hearing – and they’re right, nothing could have prepared us for the truly chilling, valuable trip we embarked upon.

As we drove through the town of Oswiecim which, by itself, is quite bland and unremarkable, simplistic and ordinary, it was unfathomable to think just down the street, past shops and a station, is the main death camp of the Holocaust.

Upon arrival at Auschwitz-1 we split into groups and followed a tour guide. As we entered the famous gates we all noted the cynical inscription, ‘Arbeit Macht Frei,’ or ‘work makes one free’ a graphic illustration of the cruelty and deceit that was Auschwitz.

We followed the guide into a succession of brick blocks that housed a museum of the horrors that took place there; a corridor filled, wall to wall with photographs of just a few of the many prisoners murdered, with shaved heads and bruised faces and details of how long they survived - which for many was only a matter of months.

Each ‘exhibit’ seemed worse than the last. It was the mountain of human hair - two-and-a-half tonnes of it - shaved from the heads of inmates that was truly sickening. Shipped back to Germany, the hair would be used for making cloth.

Then there were the piles of shoes, spectacles and suitcases – each personalised with names, addresses and birth dates of adults, children and babies; new arrivals who believed they would shortly be reunited with these possessions and never were.

A truly unsettling experience was entering a gas chamber and standing where so many had been maliciously gassed to their death. Above our heads remained the holes in the roof that just seven decades before were used to pour in poisonous pellets of Zyklon b.

Next we made the short journey down the main road to Auschwitz-Birkenau; having been more than shocked by Auschwitz-1 - we were now stunned. The staggering size of Birkenau - stretching over 400 acres, the railway track - hand-built by the prisoners, and the infamous chimneys extending as if there was no end. Ten thousand people were murdered here every day in this mechanic, killing process.

Stourbridge News:

As the temperature dropped at dusk we were all prepared for the cold in big thick coats, hats, scarves and gloves and it was still freezing. It was unimaginable to think of the prisoners walking this very ground before us, in nothing more than flimsy pyjamas and battered shoes to protect them.

We walked past the remains of the gas chambers where we were told prisoners were often forced to wait outside, naked in any sort of conditions when the gas chambers could not contend with the volume of people being eradicated.

Through research we later discovered in Auschwitz there is not one spot of ground where you can walk without stepping on the ashes of cremated prisoners.

The ‘sauna’, where prisoners who escaped immediate death upon arrival were taken, now exhibits hundreds and hundreds of photographs belonging to those that entered Birkenau – the vast majority of whom never left.

There were images of lives, of love and laughter, families and memories – a reminder to us that this was all interrupted.

As we walked back towards the wooded area, it was still and silent.

We stood and reflected; lighting candles in remembrance of all the victims and placed them on the railway track.

Reflecting on our day we discussed how lucky we are to live in a world where we are granted with such freedom; freedom of speech, thought, religion and so many other things that these innocent people were deprived of.

Learning the lessons of the Holocaust and remembering the evils of racism and fascism from the past inspires us to fight bigotry and hatred today and to not be a bystander in the midst of injustice.

After all, as George Santayana wisely declared - “those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it".