Shoes tell a story
'By preserving these iconic shoes, we are preserving the memory of Jewish children who were the victims of perhaps the Nazis’ most harrowing cruelty'
DUBAI-BASED Australian philanthropist Eitan Neishlos is helping to preserve the shoes of children murdered in Auschwitz.
His Neishlos Foundation has partnered with International March of the Living (MOTL), the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation and the Auschwitz Memorial in the two-year project “From SOUL to SOLE”, to conserve more than 8000 shoes which are disintegrating with the passage of time.
“In so many cases, the tiny shoes left at Auschwitz are all that is left of young Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. In these shoes they took their final steps as they were ripped from their mothers’ arms and led to their slaughter,” Neishlos, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, said.
“Their shoes were stripped from them mercilessly, as were their names, their dreams and futures. By preserving these iconic shoes, we are preserving the memory of Jewish children who were the victims of perhaps the Nazis’ most harrowing cruelty.”
A ceremony took place at the Auschwitz Memorial just prior to Rosh Hashanah, attended by Neishlos, who serves as ambassador of MOTL in the Gulf states, Auschwitz-Birkenau child survivors Arie Pinsker and Bogdan
Barnikowski, Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation CEO Wojciech Soczewica, Auschwitz Memorial director Piotr M.A. Cywinski, and International MOTL president Phyllis Greenberg Heideman.
Greenberg Heideman and International MOTL chairman Shmuel Rosenman said, “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.”
Cywinski noted that one of the places at the memorial that moves visitors the most is the room with several thousand children’s shoes.
“The murder of over 200,000 children at Auschwitz is impossible to comprehend. This cruelty and injustice cannot be explained by any politics, any ideology, any worldview,” he said.
“The contrast between the cruelty and callousness of the adult world is perhaps most vividly illustrated in Auschwitz precisely in the juxtaposition with the trusting, curious, innocent and defenceless children who were thrown into a world they could not understand.
“And this world is preserved in every single shoe. Only these shoes remained after so many children. That is why we must do everything to preserve them for as long as possible.”
More info: motl.org/soultosole
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