POLAND — The afternoon sun broke through northern Poland’s grey skies as we walked into a golden-yellow field hedged by massive evergreens. Birds quietly chirped in the brush. Some in the group were draped in Canadian and Israeli flags as we entered the clearing where Chełmno once stood.

Chełmno was the first death camp created by the Nazis in 1941, a year before the Wannsee Conference where German leaders hammered out the logistics of implementing the “Final Solution” to eradicate European Jews. Six million Jewish people would be killed in the Holocaust by the Nazis and their collaborators.