Earlier this year, the Holocaust Education Trust organised a city-wide trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau, for delegates from schools across London. The visit to the former concentration and extermination camp in Oświęcim, Poland was part of the Lessons from Auschwitz Project. They prepared us for the trip with preliminary and follow-up sessions, where we could discuss what we had learnt and gained from the trip together.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is composed of a total of three camps, two of which we visited. This basis for the first site consisted of 22 war barracks, which were later expanded to contain more prisoners. One of the first things we saw was the infamous arc saying ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’, or ‘work sets you free’. Seeing such a poignantly striking sight right at the entrance reduced us to a stunned silence for much of the duration of our tour through the camp.

We were shown the barrack where Josef Mengele carried out medical torture in the name of science, including experimentation on twins (the injection of different dyes into the eyes of twins to see whether it would change their colour, sewing twins together in attempts to create conjoined twins). Other moving visual displays included huge rooms where merely a sheet of glass separated us from mountains upon mountains of human hair – cut off the prisoners upon arrival to the camps.

The majority—probably about 90%—of the victims of Auschwitz died in Birkenau, the second camp we visited. By this point in the day, the temperature had dropped to -11° - but our own suffering was forgotten once we started listening to the unimaginably harsh conditions that prisoners were subjected to. The camp constituted rows upon rows of residential barracks. Fulfilling basic human needs, such as going to the toilet, had become extremely difficult in this living hell for anyone who had the misfortune of being targeted by the Nazi Regime.

This famous quotation said by writer, professor, political activist and Holocaust-survivor, Elie Wiesel captures the essence of why it is important to continue to commemorate the horrors of the Holocaust:

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

Tahreem Khan, Nonsuch High School for Girls.