It's the everyday items that really hit home, that speak of historical truth. A truth to which we can all relate.
The day I visited Auschwitz I was quite blase. Didn't I know all about it? As a former postgraduate student of modern history and as someone who, like all of us, had seen Auschwitz depicted in film and books and debated on radio and television by world-renowned academics over the years, I thought I knew all there was to know about the horror of the Nazi death camp.
I didn't. I hadn't a clue.
Just come with me for a moment and follow me into the bowels of the camp, walking, as I did on that sunny day a few years ago, in under that famous 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign.