If you’re thinking of visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau, you should ask yourself why.

I was keen to visit Krakow and, knowing that the camp wasn’t far from the city, I thought long and hard about taking the opportunity to go there.

I’m not entirely comfortable with concentration camps being open to the public as memorial museums, but they represent a chapter of history that should never be forgotten. And drawing in coachloads of tourists, schoolchildren and Holocaust survivors means they remain in the public consciousness.

It is only when you visit a place where more than a million people died in such horror that you get a sense of the terror still clinging to the barbed wire. It’s something you don’t get from Holocaust movies or grainy documentary footage.

I booked my trip for 30 euros at my hotel in Krakow, but there are booking venues all over the city.

It’s a 75-minute journey to the rather bland-looking town of Oswiecim where, in 1940, German occupying forces opened a concentration camp that came to symbolise the horrors of the Holocaust.

The passengers on our mini-bus included a Polish historian and a couple of Australian backpackers. En route, we watched a DVD of footage of the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz. Not for the first time, I felt uneasy.

On arrival, I was surprised to see two shops selling books, postcards and even snacks, which seemed beyond inappropriate. But, since you spend practically a full day there, I guess there has to be some refreshment provision.

The tour includes both camps – Auschwitz and nearby Birkenau – and we started at Auschwitz 1, the smaller site. Our guide was a softly-spoken Polish woman who handled it sensitively. As she led us through the entrance, beneath the chilling sign bearing the words Arbeit Macht Frei – ‘Work Makes You Free’ – I felt overwhelmed at the sight of rows of wooden barrack buildings surrounded by electric wire fences.

First, we filed through a hut covered in black-and-white photographs of people arriving at the camp. I was struck by an image of an old man, in overcoat and trilby, shuffling towards a uniformed officer pointing to his left. Equally moving were photographs of bewildered children tumbling out of cattle-trucks. Further along were pictures of prisoners in striped uniforms – those who survived the selection process – beneath which were their names and the dates they spent at Auschwitz. Most had died there.

Outside, bullet holes were visible on an execution wall, next to a building where experiments were carried out by Nazi doctors. In other huts were cramped wooden bunks and filthy washbasins.

Shuffling along with crowds of visitors, we were led to underground cells where prisoners who’d tried to escape, and people who’d protected Jews, were sent following SS trials.

I was particularly moved by the spectacles, suitcases, shoes, hair, even children’s dolls, piled up in glass cases, creating a dreadful sense of human loss.

And spending a few minutes in a gas chamber was long enough to absorb the horror hanging in the air.

While the Nazis tried to conceal aspects of their brutality, the basic structure of the two camps remains. A five-minute drive away was the larger camp of Birkenau, covering 425 acres.

It’s largely preserved as it was when liberated in 1945 and the first thing you see is the watchtower – a powerful symbol – and railway lines.

Standing beside a wooden cattle-truck on the platform, there was an eerie quiet where once there was trauma and chaos, with thousands arriving to an unimaginable fate. Few of the barracks remain, but the ruins of others are visible. On the site of the crematoria, blown up by the retreating SS, stands a striking memorial. It was here where our guide told us, movingly, of survivors she had accompanied to Birkenau. One man, who’d arrived as a boy, recalled his mother pushing him away on the platform. He later realised she was trying to distance him so he wouldn’t be sent with her to the gas chambers, along with her younger children. Another survivor fell to her knees, pulling up handfuls of soil as she cried out the names of family she had lost, telling them of the grandchildren she went on to have.

Climbing to the top of the watchtower, we got a sense of the massive scale of the camp. Our guide pointed out two towers in the distance; chemical works where prisoners were marched to and from daily.

As you’d expect, a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau is harrowing, but it also offers a compelling insight into a brutal chapter of history. It’s somewhere I will never forget.

TRAVEL FACTS
- Auschwitz is in south-west Poland, about 40 miles from Krakow.
- Emma flew to Krakow from Leeds-Bradford Airport on Ryanair. For information about flights, visit ryanair.com.
- For information about Auschwitz trips, visit escape2poland.co.uk/ auschwitz_tour.