ON THURSDAY February 21, 220 sixth formers from Yorkshire and Humberside assembled at 5am at Leeds Bradford Airport, in preparation for an exhausting one day trip to Auschwitz - Birkenau concentration camp in Poland - a site synonymous with genocide and with the holocaust.

We were part of the Lessons from Auschwitz (LFA) project, organised by the Holocaust Education Trust. Thanks largely to a government grant schools from Yorkshire and Humberside were included for the first time.
The project entails a preparation seminar, a visit to the camp itself, followed up by another seminar and a school or community based project.

We arrived at Krakow under leaden skies and subsequently travelled for just over an hour by coach to the town of Oswiecim, where our first visit was to the Jewish cemetery which as recently as 2000, had been the victim of the bigoted prejudice of the Polish neo-Nazi movement, leading to its subsequent desecration, and locking for security reasons.

We then moved to visit the Auschwitz 1 camp - ordered by Himmler to be converted from a former Polish army barracks.
Here our Polish guide and LFA educator accompanied us round the museum complete with its poignant collection of everyday items, symbols of lives cut short, to satisfy Nazi racial sadism.

Particularly touching were the displays of those murdered in the camp, along with the clothes of exterminated babies.
The haunting experience of entering the gas chamber at Auschwitz 1, also found a particular emotional resonance with our group, knowing that this was where thousands of people had been murdered.

At Birkenau death camp we were overwhelmed and appalled by the sheer scale of the extermination perpetrated by the Nazi party, and the camps efficient design.

It is a place of true evil, and one whose memory must surely endure the assault of time, to show the world what happens during the rise of any evil.

Chilling, also, was the thought of a Nazi Britain if the heroic defence of our southern skies by the RAF had failed, and this setup had been transported across the English Channel.

It was at Birkenau that we learnt of the heartbreaking processes carried out brutally and coldly by SS doctors such as Josef Mengele to select those suitable for slave labour, and those fit only for extermination.

It was hard to know what to feel as we passed lakes filled with ash, on the path so many took to their gassing, believing that this was simply a shower.

Sadness turned at times to anger when we saw the Nazi attempt to hide their actions by destroying the gas chambers, and also for the disgraceful accommodation and conditions in which the slaves were kept.
The day ended with a touching memorial. In the eerie silence of the cold, windy Polish night, it was hard not to feel a dawning sense of comprehension.

No bird song, no animals, the only sound was the howl of the local dogs on the wind - it was enough to send a shiver up the spine of anyone with a sense of humanity.

In the deepening blackness, in the shadow of the memorial to all the lives lost, we heard poetry and tales from survivors of the camp, and a Hebrew lament in honour of the Holocaust victims, sung by Rabbi Barry Marcus.

It was this beautiful song that shattered the grim silence, and replaced it with a sound of hope, and courage and dignity in the face of adversity.

Finally a final renunciation of Nazism and in honour and respect of the Holocaust victims, we walked down those rail tracks leaving a candle every few yards on the sleepers, to bring light to such a place of evil.

It truly was an unforgettable experience, and we plan to use what we learnt to develop our own project through the school community, in order for our society to truly learn the lessons from Auschwitz.