Who Wore the Red Shoes?

During my second visit to the main Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, I saw, heard and experienced many disturbing things.

I walked through the cold, dark 'Death Barracks' where female prisoners deemed too ill to work were warehoused until executed in a gas chamber. I saw the field where the ashes of countless people remain buried after their bodies were burned outside when the crematorium broke. I saw the cell where prisoners were kept until they starved to death. I walked past the building where heinous experiments were carried out on Jewish women. I entered one of the gas chambers and walked past the ovens. 

Glass-fronted display rooms housed all sorts of brushes, suitcases, eyeglasses, pots and pans, artificial limbs, even human hair. But of all these macabre items, it was the shoes that had the greatest impact on me this time, as a couple of years previously. Yes, the shoes. Ordinary, everyday shoes in the styles of the 1940s.

Why the shoes? I wondered. But think about it. Aside from the eyeglasses, shoes are perhaps the most personal of the items taken from the prisoners, nearly all of them Jewish. Their clothes were laundered and sent to Germany for use by the wartime civilian population. Most shoes were sent to Germany as well. But some shoes remained in the camp, perhaps at the end of the war when the Nazis realized they were losing the war and were running out of time. Some shoes were given to prisoners, but without regard to size or practicality. Some received two left shoes, for example. Most prisoners were forced to wear wooden clogs.

When Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet soldiers on Jan. 27, 1945, the camp held some 43,000 pairs of shoes. Let that sink in. More than 43,000 pairs of shoes, each pair representing a human life. There are shoes of all sizes, all kinds and all styles. 

Most are brown. Most are well worn. But among the thousands of brown shoes on display, I spotted two red shoes, of different styles. Their color made them stand out from the rest. And so I began to wonder, Who was the person who once wore these shoes? Where did she live? What was her name, her story? How old was she? Did she perish immediately, or did she die later of starvation or disease? Did she die along with other members of her family? These are questions whose answers will never be known.

Despite never being able to know anything about the wearer of these red shoes, I feel a certain connection to her. In my mind, I see her as young, or at least young at heart, fun-loving, perhaps somewhat bold, and certainly full of life. 

Few physical items are more personal than the shoes people wore. Shoes take on the shape of the feet that wear them every day. They are chosen by the people who wear them, whether for comfort, style or color. Each of these 43,000 pairs of shoes, and uncounted millions of other shoes, once were worn by people imprisoned and doomed to death because of who they were. It doesn't matter whether the people were Polish political prisoners, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, Jews or homosexuals. All were rounded up, stripped of possessions and their identities, and murdered simply because one group of evil people decided they must die.

Piles of shoes in Auschwitz and other death camps served several purposes. They were a reminder to the Nazis of the success of their ongoing efforts to cleanse the Nazi empire of anyone and everyone not 'Aryan' enough. They provided shoes for German civilians. And they served as reminders to those still imprisoned that they, too, would soon join those whose shoes were part of a huge pile of items taken from people who no longer needed them.

I don't plan to return to Auschwitz again, having visited the camps twice, the second time on an extended exploration and learning experience. But I don't think I ever will forget the red shoes and wonder about the person who once wore them.

Shoes

Shoes.

Such simple things are shoes, things we have in our closet and wear every day. I must admit that my favorite shoes are my ASICS running shoes. I have four pairs in different colors, and I wear them every day.

Shoes are humble. They protect our feet from things on the ground that might hurt us, such as rocks, broken glass and hot pavement. They support our arches and help keep our knees and backs happy. Shoes also can be a fashion statement for those who care about such things. But really, who among us gives much thought to our shoes? I don't think about my shoes unless they hurt my feet.

I recently watched a program about Hermann Goring and his role in the Nazi atrocities of World War II. Two scenes in the program really struck home:  a shot of shoes from victims of the Holocaust in the concentration camp at Auschwitz, and a scene showing dolls and other toys from the child victims of the camp.

Earlier this year, I visited the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland. Among the artifacts at Auschwitz was a large glass-front display case of piles and piles of shoes taken from people who were murdered there. More than the suitcases, kitchen items and brushes displayed nearby, more even than the room filled with eyeglasses and the room piled high with the hair of 40,000 murdered souls, the room of shoes really brought home the horror of the death camps. The shoes made it personal. Most of the shoes are brown or gray, but notice in the picture above the two red shoes. Those red shoes are the final testament to somebody who wanted to stand out in a sea of brown and gray shoes. I once bought a pair of glittery red shoes just because they were so different from what I usually wear.

Each pair of shoes had been worn by somebody, a living, breathing person, each with dreams and aspirations, who was killed at Auschwitz. When I look at these photographs of the shoes, I can imagine the people who once wore them, people living in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Perhaps they wore these shoes every day as they went about their business, working and shopping. Most of the shoes look well worn. Although most of the people who wore these shoes were killed because they were Jewish, others, including  homosexuals, Gypsies and the disabled, were subject to the gas chambers as well.

It doesn't matter to whom the thousands of shoes on display had belonged. It doesn't matter whether the shoes had been worn by a wealthy person or by a poor person. It matters not whether the wearers of the shoes were Jewish or from some other 'undesirable' (to the Nazis) group. What matters is that the wearers of these shoes were murdered because of who they were. Chances are, the victims wore these shoes until they were ordered to undress for the promised 'shower' in the gas chambers that took their lives.

Shoes are personal.The shoes that fill the display case at Auschwitz are the final reminder of people who once lived, who loved and were loved, who mattered. We will, of course, never know who owned these shoes. We will never know the details of their lives. But perhaps they always will serve to remind us of the horrors that humans once visited upon other humans just because they were 'different'.