'I wanted to see this place for myself,' he said. 'It's hard to understand. You've seen the amount of children's clothes, all their shoes, it's a really sad experience.

'There was the guy, the doctor, who made all the decisions, whether they live or die. He's probably gone home after that, listened to music, had dinner with his family as if nothing had happened.

'It's crazy. It's only when you see it first hand; you see how these people were made to work without food and water. It was a form of torture. Many died. The others got murdered.

'It's good for us to see what happened. It certainly puts football into perspective. What happened here will never be forgotten.'

Wearing skull caps, Hodgson and Bernstein lit candles of remembrance that were then placed on the train tracks that still mark 'the road to death'.

Bernstein, now 69, is from a family of Hungarian Jews who moved to New York; a family who might have been brought here had his grandfather chosen to stay in Budapest.

'You do wonder what would have happened,' he said. Bernstein shook his head in disgust when he heard how the prisoners were told to memorise the number of the hook where they hung their clothes before entering the 'showers', so they could find them again afterwards.

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