SEVENTY years have passed since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the concentration and extermination camps responsible for the deaths of more than a million people.

Reporter Liz Sharpe joined a group of students from Dudley as they visited the harrowing murder sites.

Many people say that birds don’t fly or sing near Auschwitz but as I take in my first glance at the place where many nightmares were made I hear something unexpected, the eerie sound of crows circling.

Our tour guide is very matter-of-fact, the cutting way he describes Auschwitz as a production line, simply a factory of death is shocking to imagine.

The students are led across the huge site and are told a history that is so disturbing and deranged it feels surreal.

We are warned the next part of the tour will contain human remains and as we enter a darkly-lit room, we are told how hair was cut and shaved from the heads of Jewish men, women and children and used to make material.

We take in our breath and are led into another room. It takes a while to fully comprehend what we are looking at, thousands and thousands of shoes piled as high as the ceiling.

Some of the students linger a while perhaps to catch a breath or maybe like me they were imagining the owner of a particular pair. It all feels very personal.

Seeing suitcases piled almost as high as the shoes seems symbolic of the hopes these people had and lies that they were told - take all of your valuables as you need them for your new life.

Pictures of the people who were processed to work at Auschwitz are hung on a barrack’s wall.

One girl lived six months in this hellish place but we are told just three-months was the average life expectancy for a female.

A visit in the gas chamber to see the holes where lethal poison Zyklon-B was released is only withstood for a few seconds.

The Holocaust Education Trust took 200 students from the region to Poland so they could experience for themselves the horrors of mass killing innocent people.

These students will now become ambassadors of the trust with the hope that they will ensure the holocaust is never forgotten or repeated.

Jack Walker, aged 16, from Bishop Milner Catholic College, said: “You have to be here to feel the experience and understand the picture not just students, but everybody.

“My tolerance of everybody has definitely grown.”

Fellow pupil Jack Thompson, also 16, said: “You can read about it but it’s not the same as coming, from that you experience feeling the mood of Auschwitz. People should know what it is all about.”

Scott Davies, aged 18, from Dudley College of Technology, said he had been deeply moved by his experience.

He added: “It is quite disturbing, what was actually happening. I have more of an understanding of why things like this should never happen again.”

Fellow student Libby-Gail Tariq, aged 17, alongside Scott, is planning to speak to the college about creating a display board on each stage the prisoners at Auschwitz went through to raise further awareness.

She said: “The ashes have been used to make fertilizer for the soil. It is just sick.”

Libby-Gail added that seeing the hair had been the most upsetting part of trip for her.

On arriving at Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, the site is noticeably vast. It is clear that much of the camp is gone, the crematoriums and gas chambers were destroyed by the Germans who are said to have been trying to hide evidence.

We are told that many of the bunkers were dismantled by Polish people who had returned to Oświęcim (Auschwitz) after the war and used them for them to build new homes.

We are guided to a grouping of stones and on approach it is obvious these are dedications and memorials to those who perished. A candle is already lit on a Jewish grave.

Later as dusk approaches, a memorial ceremony is held at the end of the railway line, lead by Rabbi Andrew Shaw.

At the end of the service we each lit a candle to remember those who died and we place them on tracks leading back to the watchtower and back to the coach.

The echoes from the students are that this day will never be forgotten.