Schools from across Waltham Forest were invited by the Holocaust Educational Trust to attend a trip to Auschwitz the largest Nazi death camp during the Second World War.

Reporter Barnaby Davis followed them on the emotional journey.

There is a sense of dread as we approach the largest graveyard the world has ever seen by coach.

We drive alongside railway lines, cutting through the Polish countryside, used to transport over a million people to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau just 70 years ago.

Over 90 per cent of the prisoners arriving at the camp under the impression they were to be relocated in the East in fact had a life expectancy of just two hours.

Our guide Sara Costa, who has made over a dozen trips to Auschwitz, tells me that she couldn’t sleep for two weeks after her first tour of the death camp.

“I just felt so guilty, guilty that human beings could treat other human beings this way,” she said.

It was bright but chilly as we enter the camp under the sign containing the infamous lie ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (work makes you free).

Some 200 students explore the red brick barracks containing photographs of Polish Jews and political prisoners with the date of arrival and their date of death, most lasting less than two months.

Particularly affecting was the room full of human hair, shoes, eyeglasses and belongings harvested from the murdered prisoners which included a small suitcase belonging to a 2-year-old boy named Petr Eisler.

The purpose of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s constant work with six-form students across Waltham Forest is to bring the victim’s individual stories to life, after Nazi attempts to dehumanise the prisoners.

Yousef Maiit, 16, from Heathcote School, said he used to wonder why the Holocaust was emphasised in the curriculum over other genocides.

He said: “History is political and the curriculum is political. I feel that genocides, especially those carried out by the British, are largely ignored in our education.

“But what makes the Holocaust stand out is the level of systematic extermination that was happening.

“The sheer scale of the murder is overwhelming, the amount of clothes and the human hair is awful but the most shocking thing is the emotionless bureaucracy that enforced the murder of these people.

“Before this trip the figures of the Holocaust were just numbers on a page to me. In the classroom it all seemed too absurd, too difficult to comprehend.”

We took the short journey to Auschwitz II- Birkenau, the seemingly endless death camp where the majority of the killing took place in the gas chambers.

The barracks, crematoria and gas chambers were largely destroyed by fleeing Nazi soldiers days before the Red Army liberated the camp and found around 7,500 prisoners and hundreds of corpses.

Jasmine Rigg from Chingford Foundation School hopes to use the experience here to help her become a history teacher.

“To genuinely teach the subject to others, then I need to see the facts for myself”, said the 17-year-old.

“I feel sick being here, but I’m glad that I feel this way.

“I have been to Ground Zero before but that is a memorial. In Auschwitz you are being directly confronted with the horrors that were committed here.”

The day concluded with a candle lighting ceremony and a recital of poems written by prisoners, some of which had been buried to preserve their thoughts.

On the way out an overwhelming sense of relief comes over me, to have the freedom to leave, to go back to my 'normal' life, unlike so many others who lived, worked and died here.

I am also grateful to not be plagued with the horrific memories that the few remaining survivors surely carry with them to this day.