STUDENTS have shared their moving experience of a journey they will never forget.

As the world remembered the Holocaust, Barnard Castle School students Tori Cliffe and Matt Emerson told an assembly about their recent trip to Auschwitz, one of the Nazi concentration camps liberated at the end of the Second World War.

Matt, 17, of Witton-le-Wear, said: "It is such a symbolic place and one of those places you may only see once in a lifetime, that I just had to go when I got the chance."

The first place the students visited was the Jewish cemetery in the nearby village of Oswiecim.

Tori, 17, of Bedale, said: "I just remember walking to the back of the cemetery and turning round to look and all I could see were rows of numbers on the back of the gravestones.

"That’s all these people were, just numbers, it was so sad and very upsetting."

From 1933 to 1945 it is estimated that 11 million people were killed in the holocaust, six million Jewish.

In addition to the Jews the Nazis targeted gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses and anyone disabled.

Matt said: "The one thing I remember the most was in the collections block where there was an array of peoples’ belongings, clothes and shoes and suitcases.

"I saw one suitcase which was labelled by a four year old girl with all her possessions inside but she probably didn’t realise she would never see it again. That’s when it really hits you about what went on."