Fire destroys shoes of Nazi victims at Polish museum

WARSAW - A fire Monday night destroyed some 7,000 shoes of Nazi victims at a former death camp in Majdanek, southern Poland, local media reported Tuesday.

The fire broke out at a barrack in the state museum at Majdanek and took some six hours to extinguish.

The blaze also destroyed about two-thirds of the historic wooden building, the Polish Press Agency PAP reported.

Officials suspect the fire may have been caused by a failure in the electrical system, but an investigation is still under way.

Some 79,000 people, mostly Polish Jews, were killed in the labour camp on the outskirts of Lublin between 1941 and 1944, during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Poland.