Hopskipjump.

It's twilight in Berlin. I've just returned to the hostel from a day trip to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, about an hour out of Berlin. It was far colder than I’d expected. Perhaps it was my flimsy overcoat, but I can't help but feel it was the chill of the ghosts I walked with today.

This was a grey afternoon, with day-old snowfall on the ground. It's hard to imagine it any other way, as if sunshine could ever have touched this place.

The tour group and I followed our young English guide, Tim, as he explained to us the three focal points:

Tower A – the entrance where prisoners were registered, classified, stripped naked, shaved, uniformed and numbered. On the iron gate, the words 'arbeit macht frei' ('work brings freedom') offer them the last ironic shard of hope that most of them will know for the rest of their lives.

The memorial obelisk – erected in 1961 by the Communist government of East Germany to overpower Tower A as the primary emblem of the camp, a memorial to the political prisoners – specifically, to the Communist victims of a National Socialist regime.

The Crematorium Memorial – a 'final' tribute to all victims, of all races, of Sachsenhausen.

For as long as I can remember, I've been fascinated by the history of Berlin; the story of the holocaust morbidly intriguing to me, this unconscionable and apocalyptic episode in a far-off land, made more interesting by its proximity in time. Today, for the first time, I began to comprehend the enormity, the inhumanity, and the reality. On the very ground where I walked in warm boots, so too did the naked feet of people with names and families who suffered and died at the hands of their fellow man.

What I have seen here I cannot un-see, just as I pray the world I live in will not un-see it. Whilst I am grateful for what I have learned, it is truly a heavy cross, and I know I will carry it with me out of Germany and for a lifetime to come.