02:28Poland: Auschwitz victims' lost possessions discovered after decades
Over 16,000 personal items belonging to victims of the Nazi German concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau have been delivered to the site's museum, after being retrieved from a storage facility in Warsaw where they had lain forgotten for decades.
"These are items that have never been among our exhibits - some coins and liturgic objects like mugs that were used during Shabbat," director of the Auschwitz Museum Dr. Piotr Cywinski said on Wednesday. "There are also children's objects among them - it's always an emotional experience [to find something like this]," he added.
The personal effects were originally discovered during an archaeological dig carried out at the site of the gas chambers and crematorium in 1967. However, they were then stored away in cardboard boxes at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw before only recently being tracked down.
"This had no right to happen. I would never have believed that we would find such a huge collection of objects originating from Birkenau," Cywinski stated.
The items are in most cases thought to be the personal belongings of those who were just about to be led to their death in the gas chambers upon selection at the ramp, the museum wrote in a statement. They include thermometers, empty bottles of medicine, fragments of shoes, jewellery, cutlery, watches, brushes, tobacco pipes, lighters, fragments of kitchenware, buttons, pocketknives and keys.
02:28Over 16,000 personal items belonging to victims of the Nazi German concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau have been delivered to the site's museum, after being retrieved from a storage facility in Warsaw where they had lain forgotten for decades.
"These are items that have never been among our exhibits - some coins and liturgic objects like mugs that were used during Shabbat," director of the Auschwitz Museum Dr. Piotr Cywinski said on Wednesday. "There are also children's objects among them - it's always an emotional experience [to find something like this]," he added.
The personal effects were originally discovered during an archaeological dig carried out at the site of the gas chambers and crematorium in 1967. However, they were then stored away in cardboard boxes at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw before only recently being tracked down.
"This had no right to happen. I would never have believed that we would find such a huge collection of objects originating from Birkenau," Cywinski stated.
The items are in most cases thought to be the personal belongings of those who were just about to be led to their death in the gas chambers upon selection at the ramp, the museum wrote in a statement. They include thermometers, empty bottles of medicine, fragments of shoes, jewellery, cutlery, watches, brushes, tobacco pipes, lighters, fragments of kitchenware, buttons, pocketknives and keys.