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It was in the small square, at southern end of Kondylaki Street, where we met two brothers, coaxing as best they could, passing tourists into their restaurant. "My brother and I are having a party," they told us, "at 7.30." They handed us a card. "You're nice people, where are you from?" They'd asked the same question, albeit more pointedly (and with a heavy dose of irony) to those who'd ignored their advances. England, I said, and Monika, from Poland. Funny how when speaking English to foreigners, I do so with an accent; one which I presume is something akin to - as in this case - the Greek way of speaking. I'd done as much in Spain a few weeks back, ordering a beer as if I was Speedy Gonzalez. "Ah, Poland! Where in Poland? Krakow? Warszawa? Katowice? Czestochowa?" Warszawa, came the reply. "The best!" one of the brothers replied, with acute comic timing; it was clear they'd been doing this for quite some time. "It starts at 7.30 and..." one added, as an aside, but yet, with a certain flourish, "I assure you, my mother and my sister are in the kitchen..." As if we needed such assurances.

Having already walked around much of Chania, I had the impression that aside from the 15^th century lighthouse, many of the town's landmarks, or architectural points of interest, somehow lurked around streets such as this one. They stood in corners, perched above the roads (or lay below ground level) stealing themselves away in shadows, rather than standing out as buildings often do, waiting like dressed up grandparents for a visit. This is certainly not a criticism (far from it), and there are of course exceptions to this - for want of a better word - rule. But generally speaking, Chania's visual history is there to be found rather than simply observed. Of course, no building in any town or city gives up its secrets through simple observation; one must enter into some sort of a dialogue. But in the way in which a building might give up its secrets, so Chania gives up its buildings.

The history of the town is as interesting as it is often tragic, and the scars of war and conquest are manifest in its palimpsestic array of buildings, many of whose origins date back to the Venetian era (13th to mid 17th century). It is the site of the ancient Minoan settlement of Cydonia (evidence of which can be seen in the Kasteli district in the Old Town), and has been ruled successively by Byzantines, Arabs, Ventians and Ottamans, who overran the city in 1645. Finally, in 1941, the Nazis took control and another tragic page in Chania's history was written.

Walking around the town, we found evidence of this tumultuous past in churches turned into mosques and mosques turned back into churches; Islamic arches filled in and plain windows set within the stones. I've always harboured an interest in blocked up doors and windows, and here in Chania there were many examples. And this is what I find so fascinating about the town; the fact that ruins are not isolated but are used again in other buildings, that successive architectural values give rise to conflated, unique, and idiosyncratic styles; that where one regime follows another, the past is not torn down, but is modified (one is reminded here of recent debates surrounding communist buildings in post-communist countries).

The Janissaries Mosque for example on the western harbour, built in 1645 is now an art gallery, and on its facade one can still see portions of Arabic reliefs - scripts carved from out of the stone. The calligraphy is worn and whispering, yet its presence is a clear reminder of the past. And all around Chania, it is these shards which pierce the consciousness of the traveller; Venetian windows and doorways plugged into tumbledown houses appear like childhood memories from nowhere, and one realises that Chania is not a town of buildings at all, but rather one constructed entirely of fragments. And such is the the number of fragments revealed to those who walk the streets, I found myself - as a typical tourist - taking numerous photographs. My camera was readied as if I was on safari, ready to capture an exquisite Venetian architrave, which might, at any moment disappear back into the shadows. I remember writing a while back, a novel set in my home town Oxford, where the young protagonist observed through an iron gate, one of the last remaining Bastions of the old city wall. "St. Cross was the daughter church of St. Peter in the East and was situated not far from that church in a street of the same name. It was approached by Longwall Street, towards the end of which, just before the junction with Hollywell and St. Cross Road, Adam's pace slowed in anticipation of the gate through which could be glimpsed a remnant of Oxford's mediaeval past. It was one of his favourite monuments, but no matter how contrived and deliberate his steps, the lone bastion of the old city wall seemed to fall from sight as if glimpsed from a passing car, as though no mortal eyes could frame it for longer than the time it took to blink. It was as if through the bars, the centuries passed still lingered, appearing in a space built for a second." This is how I felt, when finding evidence of the past in these remnants of windows and doors. I would stand and try to build the past around them, that from which they were - for a few seconds at least - conspicuously estranged. But no matter how long I looked, for example at the window below, my gaze could never do justice to the scale of the past behind it.

Even when looking at the photographs, I find the same thing applies, and I'm reminded of a quote from Proust, as discussed in a text by Samuel Beckett: "But were I granted time to accomplish my work, I would not fail to stamp it with the seal of that Time, now so forcibly present to my mind, and in it I would describe men, even at the risk of giving them the appearance of monstrous beings, as occupying in Time a much greater piece than that so sparingly conceded to them in Space, a place indeed extended beyond measure, because, like giants plunged in the years, they touch at once those periods of their lives - separated by so many days - so far apart in Time." These elements, these architectural shards, are like parts of those same-said giants, parts of limbs touching the present day. We cannot observe with one look the beings as a whole, we can only walk and see in pieces what constitutes the sum, a sum which can only ever be imagined.

I'd thought, whilst walking around Chania, how with every step it seemed to change, as if one were walking through a huge kaleidoscope - a image enhanced by the colour in the streets; the kitsch fodder for tourists, the pink hues of the closing day and the swarms of people, emerging to devour the night, flitting about the myriad lights. The town's character is revealed through whatever fragment it chooses to present the viewer, at whatever time: a window's architrave, a decorative lintel, an old vaulted ceiling in one of the many restaurants. I could imagine a mass of giants, writhing beneath the cover of Chania's single facade, itself like a blanket - a patchwork quilt by which the past is covered.

On the bus to Heathrow, just the week before we found ourselves in Chania, I had been considering my work on the Holocaust and considering the question which so many ask me, 'why are you interested?' There is, I have since realised, a reason why, but in the process of finding the answer, I found myself considering other traumatic events and in particular the places where these events were played out, whether Auschwitz-Birkenau, the battlefields of World War 1 or a single cell in the Tower of London. Recently too, I've been watching Claude Lanzmann's 'Shoah' and whilst listening to the testimonies of survivors, I thought of those places I had visited; Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and Belzec. Listening to (and indeed watching) the testimonies of those who perpetrated such crimes ('may I takes notes?' asks one, as if learning the facts of the crimes for the first time and thereby denying his own involvement), I found it hard to see, in the faces of men who looked like any other grandfather, the face of the monsters they were (excepting Josef Oberhauser, interviewed by Lanzmann in a Berlin bar). The truth is - and this is what makes the Holocaust all the more terrible - ordinary people, who outside of war would, in all likelihood, have led ordinary lives, did in war, unspeakable things. Likewise, ordinary places became sites of gross inhumanity, trees became soldiers, as if beneath the surface, there exists a poison, which surfaces in history and debases everything and everyone it touches, disappearing to leave the world silent, the victims dead and perpetrators old, old men, hoping that age might rob them of what they've done.

Walking up Kondylaki street, away from the harbour, we saw a sign for the the Etz Hayyim Synagogue. We followed the sign, and as if the giants moved beneath the surface of Chania's long facade, a doorway opened up to us.

The free literature explained how: 'the synagogue was reconstructed under the aegis of the World Monuments Fund in New York and the Central Board of Jewish Communities of Greece...' and that '...while committed to its Jewish character Etz Hayyim is also sensitive to the multi-ethnic and religious needs of our times and its doors are open to provide a haven for all persons seeking a place of spiritual repose and regeneration.'

Indeed it was a place of great tranquility; a peace at odds with the past, and the sad history of those who once prayed there.

Turning back to the pamphlet supplied by the synagogue, I read the following section, entitled 'The 2nd World War and the Jews of Hania - 1941-1944'. It read: Suddenly, just before dawn on the 29th May 1944, the entire area in which the Jews lived was blocked off by trucks and loudspeakers ordered the Jews out into the street. They were not allowed to take anything with them and were assembled at the south end of Kondylaki Street in the small square and in the square adjacent to the harbour to the north. Within an hour they were driven by trucks to the prison of Ayas not far from Hania. The Jewish Quarter was immediately looted - first by the soldiers. In the late afternoon they synagogue of Etz Hayyim was stripped of all its religious artefacts and left to be rented by squatters. After almost two weeks of imprisonment at Ayas, with little food and no changes of clothes, the Jews of Hania were loaded onto trucks and driven to the east of the island to Herakleion. The official count is that 265 men, women and children arrived there on the 9th June and were put on board a converted tanker called the Tanais that set sail for Athens that evening at 8.00. Along with them were some 600 Greek and Italian prisoners of war. At 3.15am on the morning of the 10th June the ship was sighted just off the island of Milos by a British submarine and immediately given a torpedo broadside that broke the ship apart. All who were aboard were drowned. Had the ship arrived in Athens the Jews on board would have been sent by cattle-cars to Auschwitz-Birkenau for immediate gassing and cremation which is what had already happened to the Jews of Salonika and elsewhere in Greece. 94% of the Jews of Greece perished in the 'Final Solution' of the Nazis.

It was hard to imagine, walking back up this street and around those of the old Jewish Quarter, how such a thing could have happened here. But it did.

"You are nice people..." one of the brothers said. He was again being sarcastic. The group of tourists had declined his advances and so he fixed his eyes on a female member of the party, and drew his hands down, as if to trace her curves. He looked at me and winked, nodding in her direction. I smiled and walked on.

I have just returned from a visit to Luxembourg to see my girlfriend, during which time we took a trip to Alsace. As per usual, I had little idea as to what I should expect of the place, but had heard that it was particularly pretty. The traffic jam on the approach to Metz didn't bode well, but once we were past this we made our way at a good pace towards our first destination. However, before reaching it, we passed through the village of Molsheim (not so far from our ultimate destination of Colmar) and if ever there was a word to describe it then pretty would be it. The weather was a little overcast, but nevertheless, the village's obvious picturesque charm shone through.

It was we thought rather like something from of a fairytale. One would have hardly been surprised if Shrek had passed by on the street, followed by Donkey and Puss in Boots.

We stayed long enough for a quick stroll, during which time I snapped several pictures, and made our way back to the car. In truth I thought it was a one off, but driving on, we soon discovered that every village was a similar, chocolate-box place; one might have expected to eat the houses, let alone take photos of them.

All this however was in stark contrast to our next stop.

Before making our way to Colmar, we took a detour on a meandering road which led us up into the Vosges mountains. The scenery was breathtaking. The clouds fell and trees rose like arrows to pierce them, whilst the drop at the side of the took one's breath and cast it over the edges of the road. After a twisting ascent, we finally arrived at the concentration camp of Natzweiler-Struthof.

The following is taken from the guide:

"On 1st May 1941, the Nazis opened the KL-Natzweiler concentration camp in a place called Struthof. Nearly 52,000 people from all over Europe were deported to this camp or one of hits annexes. 22,000 of them never returned. On the 23rd Novemeber 1944, Allied Forces discovered the site, abandoned by the Nazis in September 1944."

It was here that Hitler's architect Albert Speer surveyed the area and recognised its rich resources of red granite. A camp was therefore established so that slave labourers could be used to work in the quarries. It also housed large numbers of so-called Night and Fog (Nacht Und Nebel) prisoners, so called because they disappeared as if into the night or the fog.

The camp itself is dominated by a large memorial to the many who died here, including many Poles and members of the French Resistance. And, although not a Death Camp per se, the two barracks at the bottom (two of the few which now remain intact) reeked of death and untold misery. Even here, amidst the natural splendour and beauty of the Vosges, there is a room with a hole in the ground to let the blood run through, a white tiled morturary slab and white painted windows, not so much to stop people looking out, but to prevent anyone looking in.

It's strange how they appear gagged; prevented from talking rather than seeing, and taken with the camp's isolation, they serve to reinforce the silence which hangs over the place like the clouds.

Whether it's because of the camp's comparatively small size (certainly compared with somewhere like Auschwitz-Birkenau or Majdanek) or the relatively 'smaller' death toll, again compared with somewhere like Auschwitz-Birkenau, the sense of the individual was particularly apparent here - or at least, the sense of 'individual death'. Perhaps the location - the natural geography of the place - helped foster this feeling, primarily through the sheer size of the landscape by which the camp is surrounded. As a visitor, you feel isolated, you are aware of yourself, and the sheer scale and colour of distance. The blue mountains rising from the horizon like massive cardboard cutout waves in which you might drown; you might well shout but little would be heard, and yet, in just such terrain, echoes rebound; voices and anguished cries from the past, directed at the future of which we are a part.

As with all visits to places such as this (Auschwitz, Birkenau, Majdanek, Belzec) it is the leaving that is most affecting, walking through the gate to rejoin the real world, something which in the case of Natzweiler Struthof, 22,000 people were never able to do.

From Natzweiler-Struthof, we made our way to the town of Colmar, home to the artist (as I was later to discover) Martin Schongauer (1448-1491). It would be, I was told by Monika, like Molsheim, but bigger and she wasn't wrong. Having arrived in the evening and checked into our hotel, we went for a brief stroll, with the main aim of finding somewhere to eat, which we did in a very attractive courtyard.

It was clear that this was a beautiful town, yet the next day, when the sun came out, it seemed to open itself like a flower, or as I thought at the time, like a knot, unpicked and unwound. And for several hours we followed this unravelling string of roads and lanes, amazed at every turn at just how pretty it was. Most towns (by no means all) have their more attractive quarters, a sprinkling of timber-framed houses leaning into the streets, peering circumspectively from the past into the present day, yet Colmar seemed to consist almost entirely of buildings such as these. There were of course the odd tower block and less elegant structures, but unlike other towns, where such buildings are in the majority, in Colmar they appeared very much in the minority.

Having walked the streets, sat and sampled the local wine, we drove back towards Luxembourg, visiting the castle of Haut Koenigsbourg on the way. From a distance it does indeed look very impressive, perched on one of the wooded mountains, but up close you realise you've been fooled. It makes no apologies for the deception, and tourists, including ourselves still pay the 7 euros and wander through its make-believe rooms, hallways and chambers. It shares something with Colmar, that being the sense that neither would not look out of place in a fairytale. Colmar seems too good to be true, almost contrived, yet walking the streets you feel as if you are in the company of everyone who has ever lived there. They walk with the tourists, the streets they know so well, admiring the houses in which they once lived, telling each other what's changed since that time. They listen to the stories told by the tour guides, pitting them against their own recollections. But in Haut-Koenigsbourg, we have nothing more than an elaborate film set.

Built on top of the ruins of a genuine castle, the present day structure, constructed around 1905, is neither of the ancient past, or the past of a hundred years ago. It says nothing to us, not because it does not remember the past, but rather because it has none. It's a mayfly, existing only for the day of your visit. It tells you nothing new, but simply echoes what you know already, expecting nonetheless that you might be impressed. Even the photographs displayed in some of its rooms seem phoney. As we left I was reminded of King Arthur in 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', when after the Camelot song he says to his knights; "On second thoughts, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place". Our sentiments exactly.

Our visit was quick (at least it afforded spectacular views of the surrounding countryside) and from here we made our way back to Molsheim for dinner. Of course we arrived too early (dinner was at 6.30 and not a minute earlier) and so we enjoyed a drink and waited for the hour to arrive, which soon enough it did.

And on that hour (or demi-heure) people emerged to occupy the empty tables and chairs by which we were surrounded, as if an invisible signal had been given to which we were not privy. I was reminded of one of the children television shows of the late 60s and early 70s - Trumpton, Camberwick Green and Chigley. In Chigley, a whistle is blown at the end of the programme and all the workers in the factory, and all the town's residents repair to the bandstand to hear the band. Somewhere in Molsheim, the whistle had been blown. We just couldn't hear it.