Grim signs of Holocaust hell

Video by Nicky Butler

Students from West Midland schools learned about the Holocaust terror by visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau. Helen Cartwright reports.

It was the little things that hit the hardest.

The grim sight of piled-up shoes and suitcases that once carried hopes of a better life, and the mounds of hair mercilessly shaved from men, women and children facing a near certain death.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was indeed hell on earth.

It is now a museum to educate people about the full horrors of the Holocaust. All around are stark reminders of the brutality which saw up to 1.5 million people, mostly Jews but also Poles, gipsies and Soviet prisoners of war, perished between 1940-45.

Initially built in 1940 to house the increasing numbers of Poles arrested following the German invasion that heralded the start of the Second World War, it was steadily extended to become an extermination camp for victims of Nazi persecution.

Around 200 students between the ages of 16 and 18, including youngsters from schools and colleges in Wolverhampton, Cannock, Staffordshire, West Bromwich and Shropshire, saw for themselves the full horror of the sprawling camps that made up Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The trip was part of the Government-funded Holocaust Educational Trust's Lessons from Auschwitz project, which believes that hearing is not the same as seeing and that the innocent victims of the Nazis should never be forgotten.

The trust wants to inspire future generations to challenge anti-Semitism, racism and prejudice and preserve the memory of those who died at this and the five other death camps in Poland.

There were sobering sights for students as they silently made their way around the original concentration camp, Auschwitz I, which housed around 15,000 captives - mainly Soviet prisoners of war, German criminals, homosexuals and other 'anti-social elements' who were forced to work long hours in appalling conditions.

The infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign - translated as Work will set you free - is back above the main gates after being stolen last year.

Beyond it there are echoes of human suffering almost too inhumane to comprehend.

From the gallows where prisoners were publicly hanged to the desperate carvings on the walls of the torture cells, the experience struck a chord with the teenagers on Thursday's visit.

Chaz Mission, aged 18, from Moseley Park School , Bilston, said: "It was said that seeing it is different to hearing it and I think that really is true. The hair and the children's shoes were horrible to see."

Sixteen-year-old Wolverhampton Grammar School pupil Josh Edwards added: "I thought it would be really old and derelict. I will take away the individual stories of the people who were imprisoned here."

The scenery becomes bleaker still as the tour moves on to Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, the main death camp where prisoners arrived by train.

At any one time, it held more than 90,000 prisoners and was the main extermination site, housing the gas chambers disguised by the Nazis as showers and crematoria.

Many of the students were unable to comprehend the sheer size of the site. Covering two square kilometres, the rows of chimneys where once stood barracks - each holding hundreds of men, women and children - stretches almost as far as the eye can see.

Set further back are the remains of the gas chambers where it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Jews met their deaths.

Helen Timmons, 17, a Moseley Park School pupil in Wolverhampton, said: "It has not really been what I expected. Even when you are standing in the guard tower at Birkenau you don't realise how big it is, how many lives were lost here."

Matt Cullis, 17, from St Edmund's School, Wolverhampton, added: "It has been a good experience to come along. It has been a bit more desolate and a lot quieter than I thought."

Alex Dodd, from St Dominic's School, Brewood, near Wolverhampton, said: "I have found it quite overwhelming. It is true you can't fully understand something without seeing it - it has been brought to life before my eyes."

Students also visited the nearby city of Oswiecim - the original Polish name for Auschwitz - and went to the site of the Great Synagogue, burned down in September 1939.

The project, now in its 11th year, aims to inspire students to tell the story of what happened there in a bid to ensure such atrocities never happen again.

Steve Richardson, from the Holocaust Education Trust, said: "I hope the students take away from it the idea of it not being a sterile exercise of reading a text book. The idea of re-humanising who the victims were is a really important aspect of the project."

Back home in the West Midlands, the students will now complete projects directed at passing on the lessons of Auschwitz to fellow pupils.