Empty and numb is how most people feel after a visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

Although just 70km west of the party-hard city of Krakow, Auschwitz might as well be on another planet. Set on the outskirts of the unassuming town of Oswiecim, everything about it is intrinsically disturbing.

This Nazi extermination camp where two million Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, political dissidents and prisoners of war met horrific deaths during World War II has since become a byword for genocide and torture.