The Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, the Auschwitz Museum and the International March of the Living have reached an agreement to fund a project for the preservation of some 8,000 children’s shoes that are in the Memorial’s Collection. They are a moving symbol of the suffering of the youngest victims of the German Nazi camp Auschwitz.

Two Auschwitz survivors incarcerated at the camp in 1944 were present at the signing of the agreement at the Museum Conservation Workshops: Arye Pinsker (born 1930), deported in transports of Jews from Hungary, and Bogdan Bartnikowski (born 1932), deported in transports of Poles during the Warsaw Uprisings.

“It’s hard for me to look at these shoes. I look at them and think that maybe there are also the shoes of my twin sisters,” said Arye Pinsker. Bogdan Bartnikowski added that “it is a very tragic sight, but I am glad that these shoes will be preserved for eternity as testimony to the fact that thousands of children were murdered in Auschwitz”.

Auschwitz Museum Director Dr Piotr Cywiński stressed that the deaths of more than 200,000 children in Auschwitz cannot be comprehended.

“This cruelty and injustice cannot be explained by any politics, any ideology, any vision of the world. The contrast between the cruelty and heartlessness of the adult world is perhaps most vividly illustrated in Auschwitz precisely in the juxtaposition with the trusting, curious, utterly innocent and defenceless children who were thrown into a world they could not comprehend. And this world is preserved in every single shoe. After so many children, only these shoes are preserved. That is why we must do everything possible to preserve them for as long as possible,” said Dr Piotr Cywiński.

The project to conserve the children’s shoes at the Auschwitz Museum Conservation Laboratories is planned to take about two years.

Adrian Andrzejewski