Fire hits ex-Nazi death camp in Poland

August 11, 2010|Associated Press

WARSAW — A fire swept through a barrack at the former Nazi death camp of Majdanek, destroying more than half the building and possibly 10,000 shoes of Holocaust victims, officials said yesterday.

The Majdanek museum said the fire in the barrack housing a camp kitchen was discovered shortly before midnight on Monday by a guard making his rounds. The cause of the fire is not yet known.

In Israel, the director of the Yad Vashem museum, Avner Shalev, expressed sorrow that the site and valuable artifacts had been damaged or destroyed.

“The damage to these irreplaceable items is a loss to a site that has such historical value to Europe, Poland, and the Jewish people,’’ Shalev said.

Shalev offered assistance to the museum at the Majdanek camp, which is on the outskirts of Lublin in eastern Poland.

The museum said there were 10,000 shoes in the barrack, but that it was too soon to say how extensive the damage was.

Former death camps across an area once occupied by Nazi Germany are falling into a state of disrepair decades after the end of World War II.