92-year-old Holocaust survivor Arie Pinsker inspects the collection of victims’ shoes on display at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Photo: Tali Natapov/Neishlos Foundation

An initiative for the “urgent” conservation of thousands of pairs of shoes of children killed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp has been launched to try and save the footwear from falling apart with the passage of time.

The two-year project “From Soul to Sole” is for the preservation of more than 8,000 shoes stored at the Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland, which belonged mostly to Jewish children, but were “found to be rapidly disintegrating” over time.

“Without immediate conservation, these shoes are in danger of disappearing as historic documentation of life and death,” the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation warned.

Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Director Piotr Cywiński, noted that in a recent exhibition “one of the objects that speaks most to the emotions of visitors is a child’s shoe with a sock in it.”

“At the Memorial itself, for many people one of the places that moves them most is the room where several thousand shoes belonging to the youngest victims are displayed,” said Cywiński. “There is nothing surprising in this, as through the tragic fate of the children in the camp we are able to look into the limitless depths of human evil at Auschwitz.”

About 1.1 million people from across Europe were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau out of which an estimated 232,000 were children, mostly Jewish. When Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, there were about 500 children under 15 years of age left in the Nazi camp.

“The contrast between the cruelty and callousness of the adult world is perhaps most vividly illustrated in Auschwitz precisely in the juxtaposition with the trusting, curious, innocent and defenseless children who were thrown into a world they could not understand,” said Cywiński. “And this world is preserved in every single shoe. Only these shoes remained after so many children.”

“That is why we must do everything to preserve them for as long as possible,” he urged.

For the project, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation has partnered with the International March of the Living, the Auschwitz Memorial and the Neishlos Foundation.

“We see the conservation of the shoes of these innocent children as an eternal testimony to the brutality of the Nazi regime as well as a significant educational initiative,” stated International March of the Living Chairman Shmuel Rosenman and President Phyllis Greenberg Heideman. “We believe that everyone who has ever participated on the March of the Living and others around the world will want to take part in preserving the memory of the children and protecting these deteriorating artifacts from this dark chapter in history.”

Holocaust survivor Paula Lebkowitz, who was brought to Auschwitz when she was 10-years-old, recalled how good shoes were a desirable commodity.

“I will never forget the moment I found shoes in Auschwitz. I found different shoes and boots that were big for me, but I was so proud of myself,” Lebkowitz recounted. “Until then I had nothing, and from the moment I had the shoes I felt rich.” 

About two years ago, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum said it discovered handwritten identifying inscriptions in shoes belonging to children deported to the Nazi camp. One of the inscriptions found was bearing the child’s first and last name, the marking of the transport and the child’s registration number on the transport list. In another shoe, documents in Hungarian were found.