I VISITED Auschwitz with a package tour group.

At first we were reluctant to go, feeling we were no more than voyeurs adding another interesting place to our list and indeed we heard three couriers in one room shouting out facts to their groups as at any tourist site.

We went with deep respect, here was where the holocaust produced the very dregs of human behaviour. The lesson for me was this here was, surely, the base of the pit of human depravity but the slippery slope down to it has brought many horrors, the killings in Cambodia, the nightmarish deeds American soldiers often had to do in Vietnam. Unprepared conscripts suffer still. In Iraq we are aware of atrocities performed on 'enemy' suspects considered sub-human.

War and ethnic cleansing inevitably produce brainwashing propaganda, people become undesirable enemies, sub-human.

Leaders of civilised countries should be aware of this and refrain from sending troops into those situations which are best left to more consideration. I hope to avoid disparaging remarks about ethnic communities in our country, it's the beginning of the slippery slope.

That is what I learned at Auschwitz.

MRS B TAYLOR, Priory Road, Malvern.