I hope that readers of William Dixon Smith’s letter, published on Monday (Focus on present evils rather than past), also took the opportunity to view the BBC TV documentary The Orphans Who Survived The Concentration Camps, broadcast the same day.

The programme provided a graphic illustration as to why, contrary to Mr Smith’s views, it is important Auschwitz-Birkenau be preserved and visited by the present generation.

Mr Smith’s choice of words is as strange as it is offensive. Far from being a “tourist attraction”, Auschwitz serves as a memorial to the thousands of innocent men, women and children who were either gassed or worked to death there.

Evil on a grand scale as demonstrated by Auschwitz is not “impressive”, but horrifying, and a blot on the collective conscience of 20th-century civilisation. It involved, with some honourable exceptions, the collusion of an entire nation and is hardly comparable with the depraved actions of one man such as Fred West.

I certainly agree with Mr Smith that all such evil, whether perpetrated in the past or present, is to be deplored.

However, in asking: “Should we not put an end to present frightfulness before pledging that we shall never let past frightfulness happen again?” he also displays an alarming lack of logic, for how can we recognise and respond to evil perpetrated today, without learning the lessons of the past?

Auschwitz-Birkenau is one such lesson and one that our children should be encouraged to visit in the hope that they will help prevent both present and future atrocities. Alan Roberts, Park Lane, York.