Thieves steal Holocaust victims' shoes at Polish museum

The Majdanek museum has 56,000 shoes on display

Eight shoes belonging to Jewish Holocaust victims have been stolen from a former concentration camp in Poland.

The theft took place at the Majdanek museum near Lublin between 18 and 20 November, police said.

Previous items stolen from the museum include victim's ashes and a cap from a prisoner.

More than 78,000 people were sent to the gas chambers at Majdanek which was built by the Nazis in 1941 and abandoned in 1944.

The shoes were reported missing after a museum employee realised that a wire net over a display of 56,000 shoes had been cut.

A spokesman from the museum said that the exhibit aimed to show visitors the scale of the Nazis' crime.

He said that the theft was "a great loss to the museum" as these objects have "huge historical value."

In 2013, a Jewish prisoner's hat was stolen from Majdanak but was later recovered by the FBI after the thief tried to sell it online.

The ashes of victims from the camp's crematorium were also stolen in 1989 but were never recovered.

In October, an iron gate bearing the Nazi slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work sets you free") was stolen from the former Dachau concentration camp in Germany.