Auschwitz historians preserve victims’ personal belongings to keep alive the “memory of their owners”
As survivors and dignitaries prepare to gather at Auschwitz-Birkenau to mark the 74th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp, historians are working to preserve the personal belongings of the victims to keep alive the “memory of their owners.” The number of survivors is shrinking each year, resulting in fewer personal testimonies. That is why physical evidence becomes increasingly important.
Experts at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum kept shoes that belonged to a boy who died in the Nazi concentration camp of World War II when they made a heartbreaking discovery.
“A handwritten inscription was found on one of the children’s shoes with the child’s first and last name, the transport mark, and the child’s registration number on the transport list (Ba 541),” the Memorial explains. and Museum, located on the concentration camp site, in a statement.
The museum displays a large number of shoes that belonged to children who died in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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The shoe with the handwritten inscription belonged to a Czech boy named Amos Steinberg, who was 6 years old when he arrived in Auschwitz in 1944.
The shoe that belonged to six-year-old Holocaust victim Amos Steinberg. The inscription can be seen inside the show.
(Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum www.auschwitz.org)
Steinberg, who lived in Prague, was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt ghetto near the Czech capital on August 10, 1942. The family was later deported to Auschwitz.
More than 1.1 million men, women, and children were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau in Nazi-occupied Poland. The area was annexed by the Third Reich in October 1943. Auschwitz was a complex of concentration camps and a killing center in Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II.
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“From the surviving documents, it appears that the mother and her son were deported to Auschwitz on the same transport in [October 4] 1944, “Hanna Kubik of the Museum Collections in Auschwitz-Birkenau said in the statement.” It is likely that they were both killed in the gas chamber after selection. We can assume that it was probably she who made sure that the shoe of his son was signed ”.
Child’s shoe with Hungarian documents inside. (Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum www.auschwitz.org)
Steinberg’s father, however, was deported on another transport. “We know that he was transferred from Auschwitz to Dachau on [October 10] 1944 ”, explained Kubik. “He was released in the Kaufering subfield.”
Hungarian documents were found in another shoe. “We already have shoes with such findings in our collections, but these are primarily newspapers, which were often used as insoles or additional insulation,” Kubik said in the statement. “This find is precious and interesting because the documents have been preserved in good condition and contain dates, names of interested persons, and handwritten captions. They date back to 1941 and 1942. “
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Experts believe the documents belong to people who lived in Budapest and in the city of Munkacs, which is now in Ukraine.
Documents discovered in a shoe. (Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum www.auschwitz.org)
“Some of them are official documents, a fragment of a brochure and a sheet of paper with a name. The names Ackermann, Brávermann and Beinhorn appear in the finding, “added Kubik. “They were probably deported to Auschwitz in the spring or summer of 1944 during the extermination of Hungarian Jews. I hope that a deeper investigation will allow us to determine the details of the people. The discovered documents will be kept and will be sent to the collection along with the shoe ”.
Several items hidden by prisoners at Auschwitz were recently recovered from a fireplace at Auschwitz.
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The objects were found in Block 17 of the former Main Camp at Auschwitz as part of the renovation work undertaken by the Austrian National Fund for victims of Nazism.
Discoveries like the footnotes on children’s shoes and the hidden items from Auschwitz offer insight into the horrific events of World War II. Last year, hundreds of chilling items were discovered at Nazi massacre sites in northwest Germany. The findings were discovered at three sites in the Arnsberg Forest, where members of the Waffen-SS and the German army massacred 208 Polish and Russian forced laborers in March 1945, just before the end of World War II.
In 2017, experts discovered two ritual baths in the remains of the Great Synagogue in Vilnius, Lithuania, more than 70 years after its destruction during the Holocaust.
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In a separate project in Lithuania, a tunnel was discovered used by Jewish prisoners to escape the Nazis.
Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
