The Scots who fell for freedom

IT IS late 1946. The location is Glasgow Central Station. Beatrice MacDonald, a young nurse from Inverness, is excitedly awaiting the arrival of her husband, Sergeant Danny MacDonald. Danny, in the Reconnaissance Corp of the British Army, is on his way home, having served his country for the duration of the Second World War.

The adoring couple have been married just six months, and the romantic image of the returning war hero stepping off the train into the arms of his loving wife is a scenario Beatrice has imagined several times in her mind since leaving home that morning. Many others have turned up to Central Station at the station to greet their sorely missed brothers, sons, husbands and fathers; yet amid the throng, Beatrice will find no sign of her beloved Danny.

Official word of my great-uncle Danny's death didn't reach my great-aunt Beatrice (affectionately known as "Beattie") until 7 January 1947, two years after the liberation of Auschwitz. Sadly, it was left to one of Danny's colleagues, who spotted Beattie at the train station that day, to deliver her the awful news first break the terrible news to her first.

The war was officially over, but Danny, like many other Scottish soldiers, had remained in Europe for the post-war "clean up" effort. He had generously agreed to swap a shift with a fellow soldier, but and died instantly when the vehicle he was driving exploded after hitting a mine left behind by fleeing Nazis, a sick parting shot, as it were, aimed at the victorious Allies

Later in life, Beattie visited Danny's grave at the Becklingen War Cemetery in Germany. North of Hanover, the site was chosen for its position overlooking Luneburg Heath, where Field-Marshal Montgomery accepted the German surrender from Admiral Dönitz on 4 May 1945. And, while Beattie never remarried ("It wasn't for the lack of offers," she would joke in her later years joked), she kept a framed photograph of Danny by her bedside right up until her death, in her mid-eighties, in 1993.

Danny's photograph intrigued me as a child. Dressed in his army uniform, he looked a little like Clark Gable: a strikingly handsome man who could just as easily have been a Hollywood actor as a Highland soldier. I had learned about the Nazis, Auschwitz and Hitler's "Final Solution" at school and had often wondered, in my pre-pubescent naïvety, if Danny had helped liberate the Jews from Auschwitz (that task, of course, fell to the Red Army).

For me, though, my late great-uncle from Nairn was nothing less than a war hero. So when, this time last year, my dad – himself named after Danny – handed me down his war medals, photographs and the official notification of his death.

I felt a strong urge to make a pilgrimage to Auschwitz, the place that truly defines all the horror of the Second World War, and the reasons why so many British and allied men – like my great-uncle – men went off willingly to fight the Nazis. A few weeks ago, on 9 April, I finally made that visit.

Auschwitz, for those who don't know, lies 37 miles south of Cracow in southern Poland. It was the largest death camp established by the Nazis – a complex that included a concentration, extermination, and forced-labour camp – and it is estimated that a minimum of about 1.3 million people (Jews, Poles, Gypsies and just about anyone who opposed the Nazi regime) were deported there between 1940 and 1945. Of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered. The others mainly died from starvation and disease.

Arriving on a warm Thursday morning, the first thing I notice upon entering the Auschwitz compound are the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" above the main gate: the infamous and ironic phrase that translates as "Work Makes You Free". It The phrase chills me to the bone.

The second thing is, dare I say it, how quaint everything seems. It's a bright, spring day: flowers are blooming; visiting school groups smile at one another; the hum of traffic heard beyond the tall (once electrified) gates is a distant purr; birds resting in the nearby trees chirp contentedly. It's almost idyllic. Even visitors posing for photographs do so with a smile.

The tour of the site lasts about four hours, yet seems to flash by as I progress in a state of numb bewilderment as our group is led from one barracks to the next. We are invited to gaze upon the tonnes of women's hair shorn to make German sub-mariners' socks, mattresses and Nazi uniforms; the thousands of children's shoes; the hundreds of empty suitcases with families' names splashed across the front in white paint. I hear about those who had to dig their own graves and am even shown an urn carrying the ashes of hundreds of thousands of exterminated Jews. But it gets worse. There are the words of one Holocaust survivor who maintains that barking dogs, stripped clothing and the sound of the German language following her liberation have continued to haunt her resonates like a thunderous echo. I see a photograph of a Jewish prisoner who bore two identifying tattoos on his left arm – he'd been sent to Auschwitz twice. Read that back again: he'd been sent there twice.

Then there are the torture chambers; the standing cells; the hanging line; a shooting "wall of death". Everywhere you turn, everywhere you tread, lives have been routinely ended, arbitrarily and unjustly extinguished. By the time we enter the first gas chamber, I feel like am in some perverse dream. The truly weird thing, though, is, b Barely anyone says a word, let alone asks questions of the tour guide. No-one appears to cry, either. We can't: we're all overwhelmed. And we have yet to visit Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

A mere two miles away, our tour guide describes the size of Birkenau as we approach the back entrance to the camp. , where two demolished crematoria remain. But it doesn't matter whether you understand the metrics of it or not – Birkenau is gigantic. It's hard to fathom how families living in the nearby farmhouses can bear to live here stay beside the scene of one of history's greatest crimes. But Poland is still a poor country, and its people will take up affordable housing wherever the location. That said, the indifferent expressions on their faces as we pass by them unnerves me.

It's difficult to truly envision the sights, sounds, smells, humiliation, degradation and sheer terror of what once was at Birkenau. A sign in German translating which translates as "Stay calm" hangs on the wall of the latrines in what was the women's living quarters.
A deep self-loathing – for not feeling as upset as I think I probably should – creeps up on me like a cold, winter morning and, as the tour group goes on ahead, I take time out to sit by a small pond beside one of the demolished crematoria, where the ashes of thousands of people murdered by the Nazis were dumped. It's here, for me, it all begins to sink in.

Later, I venture into what was once the women's living quarters. You wouldn't expect animals to sleep in here, yet even in the latrines – where, bizarrely, German words translated as saying "stay calm" adorn the walls – there is a deep sense of twisted evil and foreboding.

At the end of the tour I take some photographs of the unloading ramps – where SS officers declared who was fit for work, and who would be immediately sent to their deaths – before taking a final walk within the watchtower to view an endless sea of barracks disappearing beyond the horizon. That's how big Birkenau is. Then it's over. Our driver taps his watch, indicating he wants to leave, for it seems – no-one likes to stick around here too long. And who can blame them?

Heading back into the Cracow's bohemian, bourgeois Cracow city centre, my thoughts turn to those who have recently opened up a debate as to whether Auschwitz-Birkenau should be dismantled. Just like Holocaust deniers, such people do actually exist. I find it hard to understand that line of thought. However, with plans afoot for a new exhibition centre in Birkenau, and a new museum at Oskar Schindler's factory in Cracow (he was the Nazi party member who saved many Jewish lives by having them work at his factory), thankfully it doesn't look likely.

Let's be clear, though: visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau will disturb you. You will hear accounts of life inside the camps that will haunt you, probably for ever. Yet I would urge everyone to visit if they can. Seeing inside these camps will make you understand not only what humans can do to each other, but also what humans can withstand. We need to replace hatred with love, intolerance with inclusiveness and acceptance. For me, Auschwitz is a symbol of that requirement. They must remain.

Adorning the entrance to one of Auschwitz's many barracks is a misquotation of the philosopher George Santayana's most famous maxim. "The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again", it reads, clumsily translated from "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it". No matter. I'm sure my uncle Danny, who lost his life while helping to restore order in post-Holocaust Germany, would have agreed with the sentiment.