For some, it was the railway tracks. For others, the piles of shoes or suitcases marked with their owners’ names: Hecht, Metzner, Klara and Sara Fochtmann. A rusted tin of face cream reminded one visitor of his grandmother; the book of names, recording the barest details of millions murdered in the Holocaust, made another weep.

These were some of the images that 93 UK university students who this week visited the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau took home, along with a new understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust and a fresh commitment to countering antisemitism on campus.

They were on a government-funded day trip, organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Union of Jewish Students, to take student leaders and senior staff from almost 50 universities to Auschwitz. The £144,000 grant was announced earlier this year by Sajid Javid, then communities minister.

The Community Security Trust, which monitors antisemitism, has recorded 112 incidents on UK campuses in the past five years – including 20 last year – such as graffiti and verbal abuse. Recently, a swastika was found scrawled over a poster advertising black history month at a London university college.

“Antisemitism is a real issue I hear about when I go across campuses,” said Shakira Martin, the president of the National Union of Students, who was on the Auschwitz trip. “When I took up my role as NUS president [in 2017] there was a huge disconnection and discomfort of Jewish students within the student movement.

“It was one of my main priorities, to make sure that they felt the student movement was a place for them to feel comfortable to participate. We have still got so much work to do.”

Other organisations are also considering taking people to the former death camp. Chelsea Football Club said last month it may send some of its supporters to Auschwitz to educate them about the potential consequences of racism and antisemitism.

“If you just ban people [for racist abuse], you will never change their behaviour,” said the Chelsea chairman, Bruce Buck. Such visits would provide a “chance to realise what they have done, to make them want to behave better”.

The students’ day began with a visit to Oświęcim, the Polish town where the death camp was located and which had a majority Jewish population before the German Nazi occupation and the Holocaust. Tours of Auschwitz 1 and the main killing centre of Birkenau followed.

People hunched against the biting cold of late November, later reflecting on the contrast between their stout boots and padded coats and the thin striped pyjamas and meagre rations of the camp’s inmates.

In a wooden hut at Birkenau, they contemplated sleeping on hard wooden bunks and defecating in rows of open latrines. They imagined the pain of selection by the SS guards: parents, children, siblings, husband, wives arbitrarily separated; some to live, most to die.

Personal items most starkly illustrated the human tragedy. A cabinet full of hair and shaving brushes. Another piled up with twisted pairs of spectacles. A jumble of cooking pots; a tangle of women’s plaits, cut from their owners’ heads.

For Muhammad Omar Hijazi, the president of the students’ union at St George’s, university of London, the day was an overwhelming barrage of images and emotions.

“I have no background in history, and I wanted to see this for myself,” he said. “It’s made me wonder about the people who let this happen. Where was their moral compass?”

There were many Muslims among the students he represents, he said. “It’s 100% important for all of us to understand what happened in the Holocaust. When I get back, my main goal will be to get people to talk to one another.”

Martin said the key message she had taken from the visit was “not to be a bystander”.

She wanted “to help students understand [the Holocaust], to support Jewish students and to fight all forms of racism and discrimination. As citizens, this is part of our history, and we need to ensure that nothing like this happens again. I hope I will be brave enough to speak out and challenge behaviour.”

The Holocaust Educational Trust has taken thousands of sixth-form students and teachers to Auschwitz over the past 19 years, but this was the first trip specifically tailored to university students and staff.

“The government recognised there’s a piece of work to do regarding how we tackle antisemitism on campus. One way of doing it is education, so they gave us a one-off grant. I hope we can demonstrate that this is worth doing again,” said Karen Pollock, its chief executive.

“There is a ripple effect to people learning, hearing, seeing.”

The students and staff will reconvene with trust educators next week for a follow-up seminar to discuss what they learned from the visit and its personal impact on them. Participants have agreed to become trust “ambassadors” in their universities to raise awareness of the Holocaust and challenge antisemitism and other forms of racism and prejudice.

The test of the pilot visit was what happened next, said Pollock. “What you do with this experience matters,” she told the group at a memorial service at Birkenau at the end of the day. “We now have to become witnesses to others.”

• This article was amended on 22 November 2018 to correct a misspelling of the last name of Mohammad Omar Hijazi.