ROBERT DAVIDSON was one of the hundreds of sixth formers from across North Yorkshire who visited Auschwitz in February. The Harrogate residents, who attends Leeds Grammar School, wrote about his experience:
When I signed up to go to Auschwitz, I had some idea of the horror and inhumanity surrounding the camps, but nothing prepared me for the reality.
Entering Auschwitz-Birkenau, I was struck by its sheer enormity, stretching seemingly endlessly. It
remains largely unchanged since the Russian liberation in 1945, giving you some feel of what it must have been like arriving there.
The original fencing and guard towers remain, together with the infamous entrance under which trains passed unremittingly, carrying thousands of innocent, mainly Jewish victims, herded like animals in windowless carriages with no room even to sit.
We started where inmates reported on arrival.
An SS commander decided whether you perished in the gas chamber or were worked to eventual death.
No man should ever be in a position of such power, condemning innocent people in a fragment of a second.
Inmates were crammed like cattle into converted stables, each bunk shared by several people.
Top bunks were preferred as you could sit up and avoid the rats.
Washing facilities were little more than a trough, toilets a hole in a plank.
We proceeded to the remains of a gas chamber and crematorium. Just standing there filled me with anger and disbelief.
How could one human being behave so appallingly towards another?
The most disturbing thing about Auschwitz-Birkenau was the ash-filled ponds created from hundreds of thousands of cremated bodies.
Tiny bones, once part of real people, were still visible. One could only try to imagine their suffering.
Auschwitz 1 is unnerving as it is architecturally attractive making it hard to imagine the unthinkable acts that took place within; but each block brought to life another atrocity.
I cannot describe my feelings looking at the mountains of shoes, suitcases, cooking equipment and hair, but it helped us to begin to understand the extent of the Nazi atrocities.
Every person should visit Auschwitz; out of respect for the people who perished there and to attempt to fully understand the true horrors of the holocaust.
It must never happen again.
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