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NEWS
Blaze Destroys Majdanek 'Shoe Hut'
By R. Hoffner
At the Majdanek death camp in Poland a fire broke out early this week, apparently due to an electrical short, entirely consuming a wooden hut containing 7,000 pairs of shoes that once belonged to Jews murdered by Nazis at the camp.
Following reports on the fire, Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev called the museum director, Thomas Krantz, to express his deep regret and to offer his assistance. "The damage to these irreplaceable items is a loss to a site that has such historical value to Europe, Poland and the Jewish people," he said.
In a separate incident, last year the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp was damaged by floods that threatened to destroy the memorial site. The crematorium area was inundated, but no major damage was caused thanks to the fact that the valuable items displayed there, including important archival documents, were transferred to upper stories in advance.
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