Poland’s Foreign Minister Responds to Canceled Auction of Holocaust Artifacts
BERLIN — Poland’s foreign minister announced on Sunday that an auction in Germany featuring Holocaust artifacts has been canceled. This decision followed complaints from Holocaust survivors and was conveyed through Germany’s foreign minister.
Radosław Sikorski shared on the X platform that he and German Foreign Minister Johann Vardepur “agreed that scandals like this must be stopped.” He expressed gratitude to Vardepur for notifying him about the auction’s cancellation.
A group of Holocaust survivors had previously urged the German auction house Feltsmann to stop the sale scheduled for Monday, which included hundreds of artifacts related to the Holocaust, such as letters from prisoners and documents that could reveal identities of individuals.
Interestingly, details about the auction, posted on Feltsmann’s website, vanished by mid-afternoon on Sunday. The auction house did not respond right away to inquiries made through calls, emails, or text messages.
The auction, taking place in the western Neuss region near Düsseldorf, was set to feature over 600 items, including letters addressed to loved ones from prisoners in German concentration camps and Gestapo documents. The auction was titled “System of Fear.”
Christoph Heubner, vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee based in Berlin, criticized the auction, describing it as a “cynical and shameless undertaking” that causes outrage and distress among victims of Nazi persecution and Holocaust survivors.
Heubner emphasized that the auction exploits the history and suffering of those targeted and killed by the Nazis for commercial purposes. Many documents from the auction included identifiable individuals.
According to Heubner, these important documents should be returned to victims’ families and be displayed in museums or memorials, rather than treated as mere commercial items. He urged those in charge of Feltsmann Auction House to demonstrate basic decency and cancel the auction.
