ARBEIT Macht Frei.

Three short words, but a sentence to send a chill down the spine of every right-thinking human being.

The words – which translate as ‘work makes you free’ – are rendered in wrought iron and adorn the gateway to a place synonymous with evil, cruelty and death: Auschwitz.

The sign itself, made by skilled prisoners, is decorative, attractive even, which only serves to reinforce the sheer horror of what it represents.

Tens of thousands of people were marched beneath it. For practically all of them it was to be a one-way journey.

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From 1940, until its liberation by the Red Army in 1945, up to one-and-a-half million people died in the Auschwitz concentration camp and the neighbouring Birkenau death camp. They included political and religious prisoners, socialists, opponents of the Nazi regime, gay men, Soviet prisoners of war and Gipsies.

Most of those killed, however, were Jews – slaughtered in their thousands with ruthless, systematic efficiency.

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Candles are lit on the railway tracks at Birkenau upon which so many were led to their deaths.

Keeping alive the memory of what went on in this otherwise unremarkable corner of southern Poland is the Holocaust Education Trust.

Through its Lessons from Auschwitz Project, more than 25,000 students and teachers from across the UK have visited the camps, many of them from Oxfordshire.

This month, on the 70th anniversary of the camp’s liberation, that included sixthformers from Matthew Arnold School and St Clare’s College in Oxford, Bicester Community College, Bloxham School, Banbury School, Faringdon Community College, King Alfred’s Academy in Wantage, Lord Williams’s School in Thame, Wallingford School and Cokethorpe School, near Witney.

I joined them on a long, emotionally-harrowing day which began, with bleary eyes, at Luton Airport at 5am, in a queue to check in for a chartered flight to Krakow.

Oxford Mail:

Oxfordshire students experiencing the Lessons From Auschwitz Project.

During the course of the day we would be given an insight into the unimaginable horrors endured by those who were brought here – either crammed into railway cattle trucks for days, or even weeks, or on punishing ‘death marches’ from across Nazi-occupied Europe – including our own Channel Islands.

Such is the scale of the Final Solution, the actual numbers are uncertain.

Many people, those too young, old or unsuitable to work, were murdered, on doctor’s orders, upon arrival.

However, at least 1.1 million Jews, 140,000 Poles, 23,000 Gipsies and15,000 Soviet prisoners of war were sent to the three camps which made up Auschwitz.

As a whole, six million people were murdered during the Holocaust – including one-anda- half million children.

“It’s a lot to take in,” said Cokethorpe student Sam Moffatt, 17, from Faringdon, who was visiting with classmate Ed Rick, 17, from Leafield.

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Cokethorpe School students Sam Moffatt, left, and Ed Rick, both 17.

“It’s hard to prepare for, so I didn’t know what to expect, but visiting here has put it all into context. Six million Jews were murdered, which is an unbelievable number, but this project makes the people who died in the Holocaust into individuals rather than just numbers. It shows they all had individual experiences.”

Death took place on an industrial scale; up to 20,000 people killed a day in the gas chambers, with the aim of eradicating European Jewry and any form of dissent.

Those chambers are still there – converted bunkers, fitted with fake shower heads, into which were dropped tablets of the deadly cyanide gas Zyklon-B.

Death occurred within seconds for those near the drop hole, but up to 20 long agonising minutes, for those further away.

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A fence at Birkenau death camp.

New arrivals, herded out of cattle trucks, were advised by prisoners to stand as close to the air holes as possible; they weren’t told why.

Stepping into those dank bunkers, and the adjoining crematorium where victims’ bodied were incinerated, remains a chilling experience.

History weighs heavy; the evil of what was perpetrated here oozes from the brickwork. It was a relief to get out into the cold air of the suitably overcast afternoon.

For the tens of thousands of people who perished here, there was no way out.

As well as benefiting from slave labour, the Nazis plundered prisoners’ possessions, stealing anything of value; Jewish cash and gold funding the German war effort. Even confiscated clothing was sent back to the Reich.

On arrival, men and women were stripped, disinfected and sheered with blunt blades like animals. Their hair was sold and used to stuff pillows and mattresses and woven into blankets and netting for the German army.

DNA tests carried out on blankets found at Auschwitz prove they were made from human hair – three tons of which remain on display – a stomach-churning mountain of blonde, brown, black and grey. A note from a senior Nazi official sets the value at 50 Pfennigs per kilo.

While the statistics of death are so huge they are hard to visualise, the remains of what was left behind is all too tangible: stacks of suitcases, once packed with treasured belongings; a huge pile of spectacles, ready to be sent back to the Fatherland; and mountains of shoes – many of them bright, colourful and stylish; prized items brought by proud owners who arrived in their finest clothes. All were seized on arrival.

The most shocking items, though, are more mundane.

There are railway tickets paid for by Greek Jews, forced by Nazi bureaucracy to fund their own transit to the gas chambers. Most poignant of all is the house key, left on a table in Birkenau – a symbol of hope beyond hope, that its owner would return home.

They didn’t.

New arrivals at Birkenau were taken to the ‘Sauna’ – in reality, a sadistic block where they were alternately scalded and chilled by jeering Nazi guards, deprived of their hair, clothes, dignity and even identity – their names replaced by a tattooed number.

Upon the walls are hundred of photographs taken from inmates. They depict laughing families, chubby babies, dapper young men dressed to the nines and pretty girls.

There are pictures of beaming newlyweds and jolly families picnicking, boating and even skiing. Some look like they could have been taken yesterday; they look like us.

The contrast between those happy, handsome people and the images of those haunted, walking skeletons elsewhere is powerful.

Oxford Mail:

Sophie Liquorish, left, and Poppy Deacon, from King Alfred’s School, Wantage at the guard’s tower in Birkenau.

“It’s overwhelming,” said Poppy Deacon, 18, from King Alfred’s Academy. “It’s weird what hits you the most. For me it was the hair, the babies’ clothes and all those shoes.

People had thought about exactly what to bring, and packed their most fashionable things. Seeing things like that makes it more personal.”

Her classmate, Sophie Liquorish, 18, from Grove, agreed. “It’s important to come here and see it,” she said “You normally only hear statistics rather than actual stories. This has brought it home. It’s hard to process it all. I am still waiting for it to hit me.”

And what do they think about those who continue to deny the Holocaust took place? “They are ridiculous,” said Poppy. “They should come here first before they speak.”

Matthew Arnold student Perry Chappell, 16, from South Oxford, said: “I came here with few expectations, but wanted to feel it – which is a very different experience to reading about it in a book.”

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Matthew Arnold student Perry Chappell, 16.

Ellice Rourke, 17, from Wallingford School, also challenged Holocaust deniers to see the camps with their own eyes. She said: “It is shocking; it puts a different perspective on things. It sends an important message; people who deny it don’t know what’s going on, and should come here.”

In the shadow of destroyed crematoria, blown up by the Nazis in a shameful attempt to destroy the evidence of their crimes, we listened to readings by students and were addressed by Rabbi Barry Marcus from London’s Central Synagogue, before lighting candles on the railway tracks, along which so many travelled to their deaths.

“If we held just one minute’s silence for every person who died – we’d be here for three years,” he told us.

“People say how could God allow this to happen. What we should be asking, is how could man allow this to happen?”