March of the Living to preserve 8,000 pairs of children’s shoes at Auschwitz

The March of the Living organization announces that it is launching a drive to preserve some 8,000 pairs of shoes belonging to child victims of the Auschwitz death camp.

The effort, in partnership with Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, the Auschwitz Memorial, and the Neishlos Foundation, aims to stop the decay of the shoes, which it called a “historic documentation of life and death.”

“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,” says International March of the Living Chairman Dr. Shmuel Rosenman.

The project, dubbed “From Soul to Sole,” will continue for two years.

Of about 230,000 children – most of them Jewish – who arrived in Auschwitz from the time it opened in 1940, only a few hundred survived, including 60 newborns.