{"id":575115,"date":"2025-11-17T00:18:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T00:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/575115\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T00:18:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T00:18:15","slug":"auction-of-nazi-death-camp-artefacts-cancelled-polands-dpm-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/575115\/","title":{"rendered":"Auction of Nazi death camp artefacts cancelled, Poland&#8217;s DPM says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A planned auction in Germany of artefacts from prisoners of Nazi concentration camps has been cancelled following a public outcry, Poland&#8217;s Deputy Prime Minister has said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">On Sunday, Radoslaw Sikorski thanked his German counterpart Johann Wadephul for agreeing &#8220;such a scandal must be prevented&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">A Holocaust survivors&#8217; group and politicians had earlier called for German auction house Felzmann to cancel the sale in Neuss, which was reportedly scheduled for Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Among more than 600 items for sale was a letter from an Auschwitz prisoner and a medical diagnosis about the forced sterilisation of a prisoner from the Dachau concentration camp, German media reports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;Respect for victims requires the dignity of silence, not the din of commerce,&#8221; Sikorski <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/auction-of-holocaust-items-canceled-after-outrage\/a-74761373\" class=\"sc-f9178328-0 iCaRzc\" rel=\"noopener\">said in post on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">According to reports, the auction listing on the Auktionshaus Felzmann website had been removed by mid-afternoon on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The BBC has contacted the auction house for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;Documents or expert reports by Nazi perpetrators that were offered at the auction are not for private collections,&#8221; German State Minister for Culture Wolfram Weimer told German news agency DPA.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Steps should be taken to prevent future auctions, he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;For victims of Nazi persecution and Holocaust survivors, this auction is a cynical and shameless undertaking that leaves them outraged and speechless&#8221;, Christoph Heubner, an executive vice-president of the International Auschwitz Committee (IAC), said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Poland&#8217;s culture minister Marta Cienkowska said her ministry would investigate the provenance of the artefacts to determine whether any should be returned to Poland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Auschwitz was at the centre of the Nazi campaign to eradicate Europe&#8217;s Jewish population, and almost one million of those who died at the site were Jews.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Among the others who lost their lives were Poles, Roma and Russian prisoners of war.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Many of the artefacts scheduled to be auctioned were said to have come from the Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration camps. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Mr Heubner, from the IAC, said they &#8220;belong to the families of the victims&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;They should be displayed in museums or memorial exhibitions and not degraded to mere commodities,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A planned auction in Germany of artefacts from prisoners of Nazi concentration camps has been cancelled following a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575116,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824],"class_list":{"0":"post-575115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}