FARRAGO

There is a village in Poland with a blue steepled church. It has a cobbled square surrounded by pastel buildings, with wrought iron lamp posts. There is a small café patronised solely by old men with greying moustaches and suspicious demeanours, and the busiest place is the Lidl just outside of the town centre. In the dead of winter, late January, it’s about zero degrees celsius on average. It’s so quiet it can’t be described as sleepy; more like comatose. They call it Oświęcim, but the Germans called it Auschwitz.