We arrived at Auschwitz at lunchtime. Luckily, we had made sandwiches.

Past the coaches and the car parks, we soon found the iron gates. We preferred to go alone rather than hire a guide. That meant buying a brochure and we were both happy to stand awhile and do that. I had read in a sunday magazine that in the grounds of Auschwitz, such is the reverence for the horror, that even the birds don't sing in the camp. It's not true. As we stood in the queue, Thom, ever the keen orinthologist, managed to discern the sound of several bitterns, a sandpiper, a ruddy turnstone, as well as a whiskered, an artic, and even a common tern. I demurred over the turnstone, but Thom insisted. Eventually he leaned into me and, finding his sense of occassion said, maybe you're right.

We saw the pile of spectacles, the mountain of human hair, the gas chambers, crematoria and finally, after taking the bus, Birkenau. There was nothing to say then, or now. We were bearing witness, and that was good. But if anything can be said it was that the horror was, actually, imaginable. It was there, in the monumental will it took for a prisoner to carve a picture on the execution wall. But still, for most of the day I had no idea why we were here. We had no family ties, no friends, nothing connecting us to the horror. We may have invented- for Thom's teacher- an Uncle Ben who may or may not have died in Auschwitz, but it was a lie. I didn't know yet what the lie would reveal of us.

As he had foretold, Thom found the prisoner art a solace. He stared rather too long at picture entitled ' Father & Son', but no matter. He made pertinent comments on various others. But I wasn't satisfied with the art. Sometimes it is hard to apprehend even a piece of toast, let alone historical genocide. But I was hankering for more, a deeper horror than the set pieces. Sensing that was technological, or logistical, I spent a long time in the huge gas chambers and in the tiny spaces of Block 11. I was vying for perspective, seeking out windows, calibrating numbers, barracks, cattle trucks.   Finally, I stopped, closed my eyes and understood that, possibly, I was seeking a co-relative to some other, more personal horror. I accepted this, my apparent and monstrous egotism. But if I did so without shame it was knowing that acceptance was the moment we bear witness, and in the only way possible.

Later at the hotel, Thom rang his mother. He said he'd had a super day.