The auction of items belonging to victims of the Holocaust by an auction house in West Germany has been criticized. The auction is scheduled for Monday in Neuss, near Düsseldorf.
The International Auschwitz Committee (IAC) has urged the Felzmann auction house to cancel the event.
IAC Executive Vice President Christoph Huebner called the auction “scandalous and shameless”.
Huebner said in a statement that the history of Holocaust survivors “is being exploited for commercial gain.”
“The documents relating to persecution and genocide belong to the families of those who were persecuted,” he said. “They should be displayed in exhibitions in museums or at memorial sites and should not be converted into objects of trade.”
What is being auctioned?
Felzman listed a set of documents in his auction titled “System of Terror Volume II”, which contained items from 1933 to 1945.
Various items include Nazi documents on forced sterilizations carried out at the Dachau concentration camp.
The auction includes records of companies forcefully sold to the Nazis, as well as identity documents and passports of Jews who managed to escape persecution to Chile and Argentina. This included “life-saving documents” like a release form for a prisoner who was able to leave Mauthausen concentration camp.
One of the most personal items, the auction includes three journal notebooks of an unknown Polish Jew who survived the war in Poland.
Controversially, the auction also includes a worn Star of David and a bracelet from the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Nazi propaganda items, including Nazi program booklets and posters, are also part of the auction.
Edited by: Shawn Sinico