A prominent Holocaust survivors' organisation is demanding the immediate cancellation of a German auction featuring hundreds of artefacts from the Nazi era, labelling the event 'cynical and shameless'.
‘System of Terror’ Sale Condemned
The International Auschwitz Committee, based in Berlin, has issued a forceful plea to the Felzmann auction house in Neuss, near Düsseldorf, to halt its planned sale titled 'System of Terror'. The auction, which was scheduled for Monday, comprises more than 600 individual lots.
The collection includes deeply personal items such as letters written by concentration camp prisoners to their families, as well as official perpetrator documents like Gestapo index cards. According to reports from the German news agency dpa, many of these documents contain the identifiable names of individuals, raising significant ethical concerns.
Survivors ‘Outraged and Speechless’
Christoph Heubner, the Executive Vice-President of the International Auschwitz Committee, expressed the profound distress the planned auction has caused. He stated that for victims of Nazi persecution and Holocaust survivors, this commercial undertaking is both shocking and disrespectful.
‘Their history and the suffering of all those persecuted and murdered by the Nazis is being exploited for commercial gain,’ Heubner said. He emphasised that these sensitive documents rightfully belong to the families of the victims and should be preserved in museums or memorial exhibitions, not treated as mere commodities for sale.
Call for Basic Human Decency
The committee's central demand is for those responsible at the Felzmann auction house to exercise fundamental morality. ‘We urge them to show some basic decency and cancel the auction,’ Heubner asserted.
In a development suggesting potential reconsideration, a listing for the auction that was visible on the Felzmann website on Sunday morning had been removed by mid-afternoon the same day. The auction house has not provided any public comment or explanation in response to the requests from journalists or the committee's condemnation.
