A group formed by survivors of the Auschwitz death camp is calling on a German auction house to cancel a sale of hundreds of Holocaust artefacts, including letters written by prisoners and other documents that identify many people by name.
The International Auschwitz Committee, a Berlin-based organisation, called the “cynical and shameless” sale with a title of the System of Terror to be stopped. The sale is scheduled to be held on Monday by the Felzmann auction house.
The collection of more than 600 lots at auction in Neuss, near Düsseldorf, includes letters written by concentration camp prisoners to loved ones at home, Gestapo index cards and other perpetrator documents, the German news agency dpa reported.
“For victims of Nazi persecution and Holocaust survivors, this auction is a cynical and shameless undertaking that leaves them outraged and speechless,” said Christoph Heubner, an executive vice-president of the committee.
“Their history and the suffering of all those persecuted and murdered by the Nazis is being exploited for commercial gain.”
The committee said the names of individuals were identifiable in many of the documents.
Heubner said such documents belonged to the families of the victims. “They should be displayed in museums or memorial exhibitions and not degraded to mere commodities,” he said.
“We urge those responsible at the Felzmann auction house to show some basic decency and cancel the auction.”
A listing visible on the Felzmann website on Sunday morning was no longer there by mid-afternoon. The company did not respond to requests for comment.