A German auction house has abandoned plans to sell Holocaust artefacts amid public and diplomatic outrage.
Auktionshaus Felzmann cancelled Monday’s sale of hundreds of Holocaust-related items, including letters written by prisoners. Many of the documents directly identify people by name.
Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski announced on Sunday, November 17th, that an “offensive” auction in western Neuss, near Düsseldorf, had been cancelled. He took to X to say that he and his German counterpart Johann Wadephul “agreed that such a scandal must be prevented.”
Earlier, Holocaust survivor groups had complained about the combination of more than 600 lots for sale, marketed collectively as “the System of Terror”—which included Gestapo index cards. Christoph Heubner, an executive vice-president of the International Auschwitz Committee, said:
We urge those responsible at the Felzmann auction house to show some basic decency and cancel the auction.
By mid-afternoon Sunday, the listing had been removed from public view.
Wadephul’s apparent diligence about auction-house websites contrasts with his broad-brush view of present-day Syria as ‘worse than 1945 Germany,’ which formed part of his argument for allowing Syrian migrants to settle and remain in the Federal Republic.
