I took this photograph several years ago, during one of my earlier visits to KL-Auschwitz. As I walked through the autumn leaves that were gently meandering over the concrete stone floor, I noticed something out of the norm and half covered by an old red brick that lay amidst the rubble of one of the old blocks located at camp BIIf, the infirmary camp next to the medical experimentation blocks where Josef Mengele and others had performed their work. I bent down to take a closer look, and suddenly realised what I was staring at. There before me lay the remains of a former inmate's shoe, likely untouched for over sixty years. My visit to the camp, possibly my third or fourth such visit, had gone really well to that point, I had been blessed with fine weather, and a relatively quite day visitor wise, which always assists when one is undertaking such a sensitive study. All thoughts and emotions left me when I set eyes on the item before me. I remember standing and staring at the shoe for what seemed like an eternity, yet must only have been a few minutes, at most. I asked myself, and indeed even today, half a decade or so later, still ask myself the same questions...who did it belong to, and what happened to them? How did the shoe lose its owner? Questions that will never be answered, not by myself, or even the most learned scholar. The shoe was left where I found it, as for me, the whole site is a museum, and enough shoes are gathered within the permanent exhibition rooms located several kilometres away at the main camp, Auschwitz I. I have been to many camps, some of them several times, and patently, have many memories of these dark locales from the lowest ebb in modern history, yet of all my thoughts and memories, this one shall always stand out. That personal connection, was something that no amount of documentary viewing or book reading can ever equal.
Regards,
Carl
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