Auschwitz decays, prompting preservation effort

The red brick barracks that housed starving inmates are sinking into ruin. Time has warped victims' leather shoes into strange shapes. Hair sheared to make cloth is slowly turning to dust.

Auschwitz is crumbling - the world's most powerful and important testament to Nazi Germany's crimes falling victim to age and mass tourism. Officials last week launched a global campaign to raise $165 million to create a "perpetual fund" whose interest can be drawn on indefinitely to repair barracks, watchtowers, crematoria and other structures at the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum and memorial in southern Poland. (AP)