A German auction house plans to sell artifacts related to the Holocaust in Europe during World War II, sparking a public outcry and resulting in an emergency halt, Der Spiegel reported Monday.
Reported that Felzmann auction house was scheduled to be held on the 17th called “Terrorist System Volume II 1933-1945” auction. The International Auschwitz Commission said the auction items would include letters from the camp, Gestapo index cards and files of other offenders, many of which contained personal information about the victims. An anti-semitic propaganda poster and a “Scuffed” Davy Star logo from the Buchenwald concentration camp will also be up for sale, according to the auction house’s online catalogue.
Christopher Hoybner, executive vice-chairman of the International Committee for Auschwitz, stressed that the auction of personal documents of Nazi victims was considered a“Cold and Shameless Act” by Holocaust survivors and their families, the suffering of those persecuted and massacred by the Nazis was being used for commercial gain. Documents relating to persecution and the Holocaust belonged to the families of the victims and should be displayed in museums or memorials rather than becoming commodities.
According to a report in the German newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Fritz Bauer Institute, which conducts research on the history of the Holocaust, said that the artefacts were placed under a“Cold logic of exploitation” and that individual rights were ignored, the institute is strongly opposed to“The commercial exchange of documents relating to the Nazi persecution and the Holocaust”.
The auction even alarmed the Polish government. The German newspaper Berliner Zeitung said on the 16th that, “Polish President Carol Navrozki demands that the government recover from Germany all the relics of victims of Nazi crimes found in Poland, and that Germany be responsible for purchasing them if necessary, and include the cost of the purchase in the total compensation,” Polish presidential spokesman Rafaoul Leshikevich said on a social media platform regarding the auction plan, poland’s president has previously advocated that Germany pay World War II reparations to Poland, totaling about 1.3 trillion euros.
The auction house initially defended the criticism. In response to a query from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the auction house said private collectors could conduct“In-depth research” and contribute to a“Reassessment of history”, their work is not“To sell suffering, but to preserve memory”. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told the public via social media that all holocaust-related cultural relics have been removed from the auction house website.