The Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, first visited Auschwitz in 1995. This week, as we walked up that terrible railway line to the remains of the gas ovens at Birkenau, he talked about that earlier visit.

“The first time I came, I came as a Jew to experience a Jewish tragedy, the worst tragedy that has ever happened to our people, a people that has lived through millennia of tragedy. For me that visit was a grief observed. But that was in 1995.

“Then came 9/11 and the world changed. I suddenly realised that hate had not disappeared, that religion was about to make a much greater impact on the world in the 21st century than in the 20th century, which was the century of essentially secular political ideologies. And I suddenly saw the danger that, God forbid, the lessons of the Holocaust might not have been learnt.”

That was one of the reasons why the Holocaust Educational Trust, which had initially organised this visit as a Jewish-Christian occasion, had widened it to include alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, leading representatives of all the faiths in Britain.

The trust has government funding to fulfil its aim of taking teenage children from every school in the country to Auschwitz so they can return and spread the message at school, and thus, just maybe, help to prevent anything comparable ever happening again. None of the 200 children with us had known that they were to be led in prayers by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbi.

We stood together, at a spot that had been at the heart of one of the crematoria, in a moment of reflection in the darkness, at a site that, along with much else, bears witness to the culmination of two millennia of Christian anti-Judaism. The symbolism of the moment was not lost on the youngsters. It was not just they, however, who struggled to hold back their tears. To view this ultimate factory of death in the company of these diverse faith leaders, from the Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Bahai, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Jain and Zoroastrian faiths, was to be reminded not just of the powerlessness of good men and women in the face of militant evil but also of, as Sir Jonathan wished, the triumph of hope.

As we stood behind the wire in the desolate remains of the death camp, many people were unable to find words to express their thoughts. Michael Howard, the former leader of the Conservative Party, on the visit with some schoolchildren from his constituency, and whose grandmother died right there, gave it a go. Even though it was his third visit, the place still made its impression: “This is what happens when all respect for humanity is put to one side and people forget they are dealing with other human beings.”