...

The small Polish town of Oswiecim is better known to the world by its German name - Auschwitz.

Just outside the town was built the concentration camp which has become synonymous with murder on an industrial scale. I had read plenty about Auschwitz before I visited it last weekend but nothing prepares you for the enormity of the place nor the monstrous acts which were perpetrated there.

Between a million and a million and a half men, women and children destroyed, their belongings stolen, their hair turned into cloth, their gold teeth melted down, their ashes turned into fertiliser - every trace of their existence obliterated.

This is the entrance to Auschwitz II - Birkenau, the death camp, where trains arrived from all over Europe to disgorge their pitiful cargo. On the gravel platforms beside the rail tracks, under the guns of guards manning the watchtowers, the SS doctors would divide the new arrivals into two groups selecting the fittest to work and send the rest (75% of each train load) for immediate destruction.

As the guide took us round and spoke of the horrors committed here it became too much to comprehend - in the end it was small, details which became the most poignant. For example, when the camp was liberated in 1945 there were some children who had been abandoned there by the fleeing guards. These children were cared for and placed in a local orphanage. They were given toys and encouraged to play - but they didn't know how. Instead they invented a "game" where they would take turns to play the "doctor" and select each other for life or death.

I don't think I will ever forget this story, and I don't want to.