A German auction house on Sunday defended its plan to sell personal artifacts of Holocaust victims, arguing that the sale would support efforts to commemorate the Nazi genocide.
The Felzmann auction house in Neuss, near Düsseldorf, made the statement in response to criticism from Holocaust remembrance organizations and European Jewish groups.
A Felzmann spokesperson told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that private collectors conduct “intensive research” that contributes to the “historical examination” of the period and that their work does not “trade in suffering but helps preserve” memory.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the Brussels-based European Jewish Association, told JNS that the controversy underscores that “European governments must put an end to the vile trade in death and symbols of humiliation.”
Margolin said the auction includes “correspondence from Jewish families annihilated in the Holocaust.” He added that the sale “is not only a moral stain in its historical context—it also risks encouraging hate crimes today.”
The items offered for sale, Margolin warned, will likely be purchased “by those who glorify and justify the Nazis’ crimes, and will serve those who seek to continue sowing hatred, racism and violence.”
Holocaust remembrance institutions on Saturday also urged the auction house to cancel the sale, which includes a yellow Jewish star worn by an unidentified victim in Buchenwald.
The sale, titled “The System of Terror Vol. II 1933–1945,” is scheduled for Monday, the Allgemeine reported.
The International Auschwitz Committee, a Holocaust commemoration body, said its research indicates that items on offer include letters from concentration camps, Gestapo index cards and other documents, some containing personal information and the names of victims. The committee, along with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum in Poland, has called on the auction house to cancel the sale.
The auction is a “cynical and shameless undertaking,” Christoph Heubner, executive vice president of the Auschwitz Committee, told the Allgemeine.
