Auschwitz Memorial exhibits over 3,000 restored shoes of murdered Jewish children

More than one million men, women and children were murdered in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, located close to the southern Polish city of Krakow. The vast majority of those victims were Jews, many of them Jewish children.

The Auschwitz Memorial holds a collection of around 8,000 shoes belonging to children who were murdered during the Holocaust in World War II. The center recently exhibited more than 3,000 children's shoes after undergoing a complex process of conservation that took more than a year to complete.

The primary purpose of the restoration project is to preserve the fragile shoes as a testimony to Nazi atrocities for future generations. Approximately half a million dollars were raised to fund the effort.

Eitan Neishlos, a third-generation Holocaust survivor and philanthropist who contributed financially to the project, emphasized the importance of preserving the memory of the lethal consequences of antisemitism.   

"Preserving the last remaining evidence of the children who were murdered at Auschwitz has even more meaning today, as the Jewish people around the world experience rampant antisemitism," Neishlos said.

"We must all come together to make sure that no one will be able to deny or distort the horrors the Jewish people endured in the Holocaust,” he added.

Dr. Shmuel Rosenman, chairman of the March of the Living, echoed similar sentiments.

"The project to conserve the shoes of children murdered in Auschwitz is a historic project that is crucial for preserving the evidence of German crimes during the Holocaust. It also has educational importance, allowing active participation in preserving the memory of children who were brutally murdered," Rosenman stated.

Established in 1988, the International March of the Living is an educational organization that aims to teach individuals from around the world about the lethal consequences of bigotry and racial hatred. Over 300,000 individuals from 50 countries have so far enrolled in the educational program, which takes place in Poland and Israel.

"We, who march every year in their memory along the path of death they walked, have been privileged to involve many in this project and ensure the preservation of the children's shoes for another hundred years," Rosenman said.

Aryeh Pinsker, a Holocaust survivor who experienced Auschwitz as a child, felt strong emotions when he revisited the former Nazi concentration camp as a free adult.

"This is a full circle moment. When I stood in front of the mountain of shoes at the Auschwitz Memorial, holding the crumbling children's shoes, I thought of my family who were murdered there and of all the innocent children brutally killed by the Germans in the Holocaust. We must preserve their memory forever," he said.

The significance of learning from the history of Jew-hatred has become even more evident since Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing 1,200 – the largest single-day attack on Jews since the Holocaust.