Auction of Holocaust-related items in Germany called off amid outcry

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Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski announced that an auction of items connected to the Holocaust has been called off.

The planned auction had been connected with the Felzmann auction house in Germany.

“I spoke with the German Foreign Minister @JoWadephul regarding the planned auction in Neuss of items from the time of German terror during the Second World War. We agreed that such a scandal must be prevented,” Sikorski noted in a Polish-language post on X, according to a translation.

“Thank you, minister @JoWadephul, for the information that the offensive auction of Holocaust artifacts has now been cancelled. Respect for victims requires the dignity of silence, not the din of commerce,” he noted in an English-language post.

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Nazi Germany’s horrific mass murder of Jews during World War II represents a major point in 20th century world history. Items that would have been up for auction included letters written by prisoners in concentration camps, as well as Gestapo index cards and other perpetrator documents, The Associated Press reported, citing German news agency dpa.

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There had been pushback against the plan for the auction.

For example, the Fritz Bauer Institute strongly objected to the Holocaust-related auction in a press release.

“The Fritz Bauer Institute protests against the planned auction by the Felzmann auction house and fundamentally opposes any commercial trade in documents relating to Nazi persecution and the Holocaust. No business should be conducted with such documents,” a German-language press release declared, according to a translation.

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A group of child survivors behind a barbed wire fence at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland, on the day of the camp’s liberation by the Red Army, 27th January 1945. Photo taken by Red Army photographer Captain Alexander Vorontsov during the making of a film about the liberation of the camp. The children were dressed in adult uniforms by the Russians. The children are (left to right): Tomy Schwarz (later Shacham), Miriam Ziegler, Paula Lebovics (front), Ruth Webber, Berta Weinhaber (later Bracha Katz), Erika Winter (later Dohan), Marta Weiss (later Wise), Eva Weiss (later Slonim), Gabor Hirsch (just visible behind Eva Weiss), Gabriel Neumann, Robert Schlesinger (later Shmuel Schelach), Eva Mozes Kor, and Miriam Mozes Zeiger.

“For victims of Nazi persecution and Holocaust survivors, this auction is a cynical and shameless undertaking that leaves them outraged and speechless,” Christoph Heubner of The International Auschwitz Committee declared in a statement, according to the AP. “We urge those responsible at the Felzmann auction house to show some basic decency and cancel the auction,” he had noted in the statement, according to the outlet.