Holocaust victims' shoes stolen from Polish museum

Thieves have stolen eight shoes belonging to Holocaust victims from a museum in Poland, the latest in a series of thefts targeting memorials to those killed in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, CNN reported.

The shoes were stolen from a permanent exhibition at the Majdanek State Museum in Lublin, spokeswoman Agnieszka Kowalczyk-Nowak told CNN on Wednesday.

The museum displays 280,000 shoes belonging to Holocaust victims in a former barracks building on the grounds of the former concentration camp.

The theft was uncovered when a security guard noticed Thursday that one of the cabinets used to display the shoes had been broken into, Kowalczyk-Nowak said. This triggered a count that revealed that eight shoes had been stolen.

The theft was reported to police, and a criminal investigation is ongoing, she said.