Here is an eloquent, impassioned account of a first visit to Auschwitz.

Not least the stunning bewildering realisation when you arrive at the site that the car-park in front of it is full of … tourist coaches. People in shorts with video cameras, chatting away, perhaps looking forward to moving on to the next mass tourist attraction near Krakow, the salt mines.

The accompanying almost cheery summer pictures bring out well the baffling feeling one has visiting the camp. How did it all happen? How come it is now a tourist site? How come I am here trying to grapple with all this in my head?

Why is that tawdry supermarket over the road so close to the camp? How does one start to try to work out just how far a supermarket ‘should’ be built from the entrance to a former death-camp?

Imagine what it must be like to live in the town of O