George Freeman MP accompanied four Norfolk sixth-form students on a one-day visit to the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The trip was organised by the Holocaust Education Trust as part of their ongoing project to give students the opportunity to learn about the events that took place at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the second world war.

Wymondham College students Alicia Shortman and Kathryn Norton and Dereham Sixth Form students Lewis Long and Ross Perkins joined others from across the East of England to visit the sites.

Mr Freeman, MP for Mid Norfolk, said: 'Seeing Auschwitz is a life-changing experience. To visit a place where 11 million people were murdered in the name of political ideology by the Nazis is a reminder of the importance of democracy, freedom and the pluralist society we take for granted.'

The group from Norfolk, which also included Norwich South MP Simon Wright, first visited Osweicim, the town where the Auschwitz death and concentration camps were located and where, before the war, 58pc of the population was Jewish.

Students then visited Auschwitz I to see the former camp's barracks and crematoria and witness the piles of belongings that were seized by the Nazis. Finally they spent time at the main killing centre of Birkenau where the day concluded with candle lighting and a period of reflection to remember the six million Jews, and the Roma, Sinti, gay, disabled and black people and other victims of the Nazis killed in the Holocaust.