Auschwitz museum begins emotional work of conserving 8,000 shoes of murdered children
A two-year effort is underway to preserve 8,000 children's shoes at the former concentration and extermination camp where German forces murdered 1.1 million people during World War II.
OSWIECIM, Poland — In a modern conservation laboratory on the grounds of the former Auschwitz camp, a man wearing blue rubber gloves uses a scalpel to scrape away rust from the eyelets of small brown shoes worn by children before they were murdered in gas chambers.
Colleagues at the other end of a long work table rub away dust and grime, using soft cloths and careful circular motions on the leather of the fragile objects. The shoes are then scanned and photographed in a neighboring room and catalogued in a database.
The work
