I used to take a group of Sixth form History and/or German students to Berlin, usually in February, as part of theirA-level courses. As part of the week we always visited Sachsenhausen concentration camp at Oranienburg just outside Berlin. Sometimes we had an English-speaking guide, but the first year, just after the Wall had come down , we had an East German guide with scant English and I had to do a more or less simultaneous translation of the commentary. It was a bitterly cold February, (so cold the brakes on our coach froze up when we stopped at traffic lights ) and our students with their Russian fur hats (bought at the Brandenburg Gate) and thick coats and boots were frozen to the marrow on the bleak assembly ground or Appellplatz, when they saw the thin striped uniforms the prisoners wore in all weathers they began to understand the living conditions if you can call them that. Some of our "coolest" kids were visibly shaken by the whole experience. Having seen both Sachsenhausen where tens of thousands died, although not specifically a death camp, and also Bergen -Belsen I would not choose to go to Auschwitz now, but the personal experience of seeing "for real" those dreadful places was a moving experience and added a sort of understanding of an incomprehensible atrocity.