Auschwitz is not an easy place to visit. On a glorious afternoon, it is beyond human capacity to imagine those calm, green acres as an extermination camp. Impossible, in the autumn sunshine, to grasp the grief and terror of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children herded off trains inside Birkenau, separated and led either directly to the gas chambers or to a short, brutal existence of forced labour, packed inside cattle sheds, twenty to a bed, stripped of the last vestiges of humanity.

Yet a visit is profoundly worthwhile, because it is an opportunity to remember again the enormity of the crime and to make it more than just a brief historical reference point in the continuing story of war, genocide and human cruelty.  And the impact of the display cabinets full of human hair, abandoned luggage, spectacles and shoes has a poignancy that no written words can achieve.

Congratulations, then, to the Holocaust Educational Trust, which organised this trip for London school-children and other guests, such as Members of Parliament. The HEF has an ambitious programme of school visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau, supported by the government, and I hope more local children will get the opportunity to participate in future in this sad but powerful experience.