Tuesday, 02 January 2024 12:17 GMT

German auction of Nazi artifacts gets canceled after backlash


(MENAFN) A planned German auction of documents and items from World War II-era concentration camps was canceled following widespread condemnation.

The Felzmann Auction House had intended to sell 623 items from 1933 to 1945 on Monday under the title ‘System of Terror Vol. II’. The catalogue included postcards and letters from prisoners, a 1937 medical report on forced sterilizations at Dachau, a Gestapo file on the execution of a Jewish man in the Mackeim ghetto, an anti-Semitic propaganda poster, and Star of David patches and armbands from Buchenwald.

The sale drew criticism nationally and internationally. Christoph Huebner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee, called it “cynical and shameless,” adding that Holocaust-related documents “should be displayed in museums or in exhibitions at memorial sites and not be degraded to objects of trade.”

The Fritz Bauer Institute, a German Holocaust research center, said the auction “reflects a disregard for the personal rights of the victims and the legitimate interests of their descendants.”

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Warsaw pressured North Rhine-Westphalia authorities to halt the sale and thanked German counterpart Johann Wadephul on Sunday “for the information that the offensive auction of Holocaust artifacts has now been canceled.”

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