Thousands of Holocaust victims' personal items recovered

More than 16,000 items belonging to Holocaust victims have been recovered and returned to the Auschwitz museum and memorial in Poland. (Pawel Sawicki, Auschwitz Memorial)

Tens of thousands of personal items belonging to Holocaust victims who were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau have been returned to the former concentration camp’s museum in Poland after sitting forgotten in storage boxes for nearly 50 years.

The more than 16,000 items, including thermometers, jewelry, lighters, buttons and keys were first unearthed during archaeological digs carried out in the area of the Nazi death camp’s gas chamber and crematorium in 1967.

Many of the items were found intact but appeared to be worn or faded, including multi-coloured beads, a thimble, a monogrammed cufflink and game tiles.

“In most cases these are the last personal belongings of the Jews led to death in the gas chambers upon selection at the ramp,” the museum said in a statement.

More than one million people, the majority of them Jewish, were sent to their deaths in Auschwitz-Birkenau under German Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

Museum collections staff said they knew some of the items had been unearthed due to a 1967 short documentary film that showed the process of the excavations near the gas chamber and crematorium ruins.

“The register of the Museum Collections only shows slightly more than 400 objects from these excavations,” Elzbieta Cajzer, head of museum collections, said in a statement. “We were convinced, however, that it had to be much more.”

In attempting to find those connected with the archaeological project, the museum reached several dead ends. “After all, almost 50 years have passed; Polish institutions have undergone thorough changes after the fall of Communism, “ said Auschwitz Museum director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywinski. “We took into account and were prepared for any eventuality.”

However, staff were able to make contact with the last living people involved with the project, leading them to 48 cardboard boxes full of personal belongings, which had been stored at the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Cywinski said he considered the discovery of such a large collection as “unlikely as finding the treasure of the lost Galleon. I can only try to imagine why the lost objects were deposited in these boxes just after digging up.”

Cywinski speculated that those who unearthed the items intended to analyze them or write a research paper after their discovery in the summer of 1967. But, he said, any plans may have been put on hold a few months later, when “political turnabout as the communist authority took a clearly anti-Semitic course.”

Cywinski added: “The times were difficult for topics related to the Holocaust.”

In their statement, the museum called the objects a “remarkable testimony” to the history of the camp and the Holocaust.

In early June, the items were transported to the Auschwitz Museum, where officials says they will be “thoroughly documented, and checked in terms of their state of preservation.”

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation is also using emergency funding for possible conservation work of the objects.

All photos courtesy Pawel Sawicki, Auschwitz Memorial