The term “Holocaust denier” is used with great contempt by many in modern Western society and still, visiting Auschwitz for the first time, I am reminded of Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s work on grieving and the spotlight it shines on denial. For even with the weight of history – with all the evidence we have already seen and are about to see during our visit – it is hard to believe the acts of violence that were perpetrated against men, women and children at Auschwitz, Birkenau and other camps during the Second World War.

We start our visit at the main gate to Auschwitz with its sign (recently stolen and replaced) which carries the legend “Arbeit macht frei” (“work will make you free”). A number of the camp’s buildings have been made into displays so that, over time, it is possible to build up a picture of the 1.5 million men, women and children (of whom 90% were Jews) who lost their lives at Auschwitz and Birkenau at the hands of the Nazis.

Amongst the displays that strike home I am particularly touched by an expanse of human hair and a roll of the cloth into which it was woven as just one way of exploiting the Jews. In another, my mother notices a suitcase which bears the maiden name of my great grandmother. In a third, the focus of which is women in the camp, there are photos of naked women after four months of intensive treatment following the end of the war. The narrative gives their bodyweight: one woman weighs as little as a third of her pre-war weight.

We go to Birkenau and visit the gas chambers which the Nazis sought to destroy at the end of the war. At the main gate we see the railway lines by which so many thousands of people were transported to the camps. Throughout our visit to Birkenau I am struck by the number of signs of remembrance – flowers, candles and other items have been lain on the ground or attached to pictures. Somehow, they evoke a sense of connection with those people whose lives were so cruelly taken.