A planned auction of Holocaust-related artifacts in Germany was canceled on Sunday after receiving widespread criticism from survivors' groups. The sale, organized by Felzmann auction house, was scheduled to feature documents and personal items belonging to Holocaust victims, including Nazi records, identification papers of Jewish refugees, and Stars of David from concentration camps. Poland's foreign minister, who called the auction offensive, posted Sunday that he and Germany's foreign minister agreed the sale should not take place, Deutsche Welle reports, then later expressed approval at the cancellation.
The collection of more than 600 lots was to be auctioned in western Neuss, near Düsseldorf. The International Auschwitz Committee had criticized the auction as "cynical and shameless," arguing that such materials should be preserved by families or displayed in museums rather than sold for profit. The committee's Christoph Heubner, who had urged the auction house to show "basic decency," said selling these items amounted to exploiting the history of persecution for commercial gain. In many of the documents, the committee said, people's names were legible, per the Guardian. The auction, titled "System of Terror Vol II," included items dating from 1933 to 1945. Among them were:
- Letters written by prisoners from German concentration camps to loved ones at home,
- Documents detailing forced sterilizations at Dachau, per dpa.
- Records of businesses seized by the Nazis.
- Personal papers of Jews who escaped to South America.
- A set of journals kept by a Polish Jewish survivor.
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