Suitcases which were later plundered of valuables and never returned to their owners, who were instead led to their deaths.

Children's toys, thousands of pairs of glasses, the shawls of old women. The sentimental photographs of family and friends, the mementoes quickly thrown into bags as the Nazis rounded up the ghettos for deportation.

All tokens of a normality which was replaced by the most extreme horror, all testimonies to the lives which were stolen.

And then there is the mound of human hair – over two tonnes of it – which brings home the true barbarity of what took place here.

It was used to make socks for German submarine crews and, in one instance, a carpet for a senior fascist.

These are the grim reminders of the Holocaust which confront visitors to the first concentration camp to bear the infamous name Auschwitz.

Now a museum dedicated to the memory of those who died in this quiet southern corner of Poland, it is just one small part of a massive death factory stretching for tens of kilometres over the surrounding countryside and centred on the town of Oswiecim (pronounced Os-vee-chim).

At its height, Auschwitz – the name is a German corruption of the Polish – incorporated up to 40 satellite camps of varying sizes, including the massive Birkenau complex just over a mile away.

I've come here with the Holocaust Educational Trust, a charity which engages with schools to enable young people to learn valuable lessons about what happened in places like this during Europe's darkest years.

With me are A-level students Jake French and Amy Wade, from Coquet High School in Amble, and Esther Kelsey and Rachael Fraser from the Duchess's Community High School in Alnwick.

MP Sir Alan Beith has also made the journey – just a two-hour flight from Newcastle to Krakow and then a short coach ride to reach Oswiecim.

Our first stop is at the Jewish Cemetery, the only remaining legacy to the town's thriving pre-war Semitic community.

Before the Nazis came, there were numerous synagogues. The Jews had lived here peacefully for centuries, but that was all to change when the German army invaded in September 1939.

The places of worship were burned down and the headstones in the cemetery were ripped up, smashed into pieces and used to pave roads around Oswiecim.

And then, on January 25, 1940, Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler signed the order to establish a dedicated Konzentrationslager, or concentration camp, to provide labour in the newly-annexed Polish
territory.

The infrastructure was already there, in the form of a Polish Army barracks, its three-storey blocks are arranged in neatly symmetrical streets.

Were it not for the electrified razor wire segregating the various sections of the camp, or the lines of sombre watchtowers, it almost has an air of respectability.

Above its gate are the three infamous words which have immortalised concentration camps, not only on film but in the human psyche – "Arbeit Macht Frei". In English, "Work Makes Freedom".

By comparison, Birkenau – again a corruption, this time for Brzezinka, or birch tree – was designed with systematic extermination in mind.

Even on appearance alone, it is a far colder place. There are no such signs to betray the grotesque ideology behind the madness of what happened there.

We move through its gates, passing beneath the sign where thousands of prisoners were marched daily to forced labour in the IG Farben factory.

Only for us, there is no orchestra playing as there was 60 years ago, just a hushed quiet and the crackle of loose stone underfoot.

But it's only when you actually enter the blocks at Auschwitz I that the full horror of its legacy emerges in the most overwhelming way imaginable.

Intended to house political prisoners and Soviet PoWs, it became the administrative centre for all the camps in the area, as well as the testing ground for developing efficient genocide.

Its first human shipments included German criminals, then Polish intellectuals and resistance movement members and later Soviet captives. Soon afterwards, homosexuals and finally Jews were interned.

As we weave through corridors and rooms of various blocks, we're confronted with the lasting physical evidence of the Holocaust, the possessions of the victims.

For some of us, the pitiful sight of children's shoes, clothes and toys is just too much to bear.

"I expected to be upset but I don't think the enormity of it has sunk in yet," said Rachael Fraser, 17, from Stott Street in Alnwick.

"Seeing all the prisoners' possessions is something that will stay with me for a very long time."

But what we can't see also has a profound effect.

Atrocities were commonplace – shootings took place at the 'Death Wall' between Blocks 10 and 11, where prisoners were also subjected to being hung by their hands from a hook on a sturdy wooden post until they expired.

Inside Block 11, we are told, prisoners would slowly suffocate in standing-room only cells. Sometimes the SS would light a candle inside to burn up the oxygen more quickly.

Standing here today, there is only silence and memory.

"It's hard to come to terms with what took place in these buildings," says Jake French, from Leazes Street in Amble. "The camp looks like a typical small village, yet there was so much suffering going on here."

We are then told that, on September 3, 1941, deputy camp commandant SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritzsch experimented on 600 Russian PoWs and 250 ill Polish inmates by cramming them into the basement of Block 11 and gassing them with Zyklon B.

The future of the Final Solution had arrived, but a mere cellar wouldn't suffice.

The next stage of our visit takes us to an ammunition store opposite the camp offices, which was converted into a gas chamber and crematorium.

From 1941 to 1942 it alone claimed 60,000 lives – almost eight times the population of Alnwick.

But the Nazi office workers soon became distressed by the sounds of the screaming inside.

To alleviate the distraction this caused, the perpetrators tried to drown out the agonising death throes of their victims by revving a pair of motorbikes outside the administration building window during the gassing process.

It didn't work, so the building was covered with earth to dampen the clamour of men, women, children and babies being poisoned.

Despite the success, the lone gas chamber couldn't cope so a new camp at Birkenau was conceived.

The effect of Auschwitz is written all over the faces of those who have come here today.

"Seeing this camp was the most distressing part of the whole tour," says 17-year-old Esther Kelsey, from Eglingham.

"It's something I had to do. The numbers of people who passed through here are hard to comprehend, but I'm ready to take my experiences away with me and share with others just how horrific this all is. It should never be allowed to happen again."

Sir Alan said: "It's grim and horrific to see the vast scale of what happened at Auschwitz, what was involved in murdering people by their millions.

"I think it's vital that future generations know what happened here and that something so terrible should never be allowed to happen again."

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