Shoe
1.5 million Jewish children died in the Holocaust.
Child's leather shoe recovered from 'Kanada' barracks, Auschwitz, 1945.
 Shoes confiscated from prisoners in Majdanek. |
 Women and children upon arrival at Auschwitz, 194?. |
Story of the Artifact
This shoe is one of thousands found in the 'Kanada' barracks at Auschwitz by liberating Allied Forces. It belonged to a child of about 3 or 4 years. The child's name, family and country of origin will never be known. Young children deported to Auschwitz were among the first to be "selected" for the gas chambers. An estimated two hundred and twenty thousand children died in Auschwitz alone.
Background
The mass deportations of millions of Jews to concentration camps provided the Nazis with warehouses of confiscated property. Upon arrival at Auschwitz, Jews were stripped of their clothes and personal possessions.
The 34 barracks in Auschwitz, where these belongings were sorted and stored, were known as 'Kanada,' the name used by camp inmates to denote a place of plenty. At liberation, fleeing SS troops set fire to most of the barracks but Allied Forces reported that the six remaining barracks contained a staggering number of personal effects, including clothes, wedding rings, hairbrushes, eyeglasses, and 393,255 pairs of shoes.