Nazi Death Camp Majdanek
Nazi Death Camp MajdanekReuters

Eight shoes that once belonged to Holocaust victims have been stolen from the former concentration camp Majdanek in Poland, now a state-run museum, The Associated Press (AP) reported on Tuesday.

Police believe the theft occurred between November 18 and November 20, when a museum employee discovered that a metal net that protected an exhibit of shoes had been cut and the shoes were missing, according to Polish officials.

The exhibit consists of 56,000 shoes that belonged to Jews killed at the death camp, which was operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II.

Such exhibitions, which can be found at Auschwitz and other Holocaust memorial sites, aim to give viewers a sense of the huge proportion of the Nazi crimes.

Several weeks ago, thieves stole part of the large iron sign at the entrance to the Dachau concentration camp which says “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Makes You Free).

Dachau, which is not far from Munich, was the first of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany.

In September, a number of bronze shoes were stolen from the riverside Holocaust memorial ‘Shoes on the Danube’ in Budapest, Hungary.

The memorial by Gyula Pauer and Can Togay, which was erected on the left bank of the Danube near Parliament in 2005, commemorates the victims of the Arrow Cross militiamen in Budapest during World War II.

The victims were told to take off their shoes before being shot and flung into the freezing Danube.