The bus driver is getting a little exasperated. We’re already 15 minutes late, and there are road works on the A614. Unless we set off immediately, we are going to be very late. 

Mrs Rottweiler, who is not easily intimidated by anyone (including Damon Watson’s dad), firmly reassures him that phone calls have been made and the missing child will arrive shortly.

On a cold February morning with sleet showers promised, it feels somehow appropriate to visit the National Holocaust Centre and Museum in Newark. 

What seems less appropriate is the cheer that goes up when Jamil finally comes racing along the pavement towards us. With one flash of his beautiful dark eyes and angelic grin, all our sombre thoughts and petty irritations are banished, and we’re on our way. 

Desire to confront injustice

Following the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, our children have been learning about the horrors of those dark times.

The visit itself proves to be a moving experience, and especially valuable in that it inspires in our students a fierce desire to confront injustice. 

In a world that too often seeks blunt, populist solutions to complex problems, teaching children to challenge hate and prejudice is vital. 

But these shining, happy faces, filled with excitement at being out of school on a bright February morning, are not ready to witness the full horror of what happened in the Nazi death camps. 

The truth is horrifying stuff, which even adults (myself included) avoid looking too closely at. Contemplating the greatest evils of the Holocaust does not come without sleepless nights. 

The monster within all of us

“How could ordinary people do those horrible things?” asks Louise. Her question (which in part is a telling off, because she has learned that even teachers committed acts of cruelty) is the most difficult of all to answer. 

If only monsters are capable of carrying out monstrous crimes, then a monster must lurk within all of us. 

When I was a child, I went to that famous seaside town on the Lancashire coast with my family. While there, we visited the Hall of Mirrors and laughed at the grotesquely distorted images that were reflected back at us. “Mirrors don’t lie,” my dad told us with a grin.

Was it through the distorting mirror of racist propaganda that ordinary people were conditioned to view other ordinary people as things less than human?

How else could ordinary people have justified their willingness to participate in, applaud or even simply to turn a blind eye to such extraordinary acts of cruelty and inhumanity? 

Faces of Auschwitz, a project to restore and colourise the 39,916 registration photographs of Auschwitz prisoners, from 1941 until spring 1943, is determined to bring the dead to life. 

It should be compulsory viewing for all adults, for only by witnessing man’s capacity for evil in modern and unflinching terms can we arm ourselves against it. 

The fresh bruises and raw fear are unbearable, but the most harrowing portrait of all is that of Istvan Reiner. A beautiful, dark-eyed four year old with a sweet angelic grin, smiling for the camera shortly before his murder in a Nazi gas chamber. 

Steve Eddison is a teacher at Arbourthorne Community Primary School in Sheffield