This sale offers, among other things, letters from concentration camp prisoners and Gestapo archives. It was canceled due to pressure from survivors.
The auction that will take place this Monday is called the “Terror System”. Among the 600 lots on offer: letters written by German concentration camp prisoners to their families, Gestapo files and other documents related to crimes committed during the Holocaust, noted the dpa press office. However, due to strong protests, German auction house Felzmann chose to cancel it.
“For the victims of Nazi persecution and Holocaust survivors, this auction is a cynical and shameful act, which leaves them angry and speechless,” Christoph Heubner, executive vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee, a Berlin-based survivors’ group, responded on Saturday.
Scandals to “avoid”
“Their history and the suffering of all those persecuted and killed by the Nazis were exploited for commercial purposes,” he regretted, adding that these documents should be exhibited in a museum. In addition, the names of the people concerned, identified in some of the documents, “are the families of the victims,” he stressed.
Active And to emphasize: “Respect for the victims requires the dignity of silence, and not the noise of commerce. »
According to the Associated Press, the collection of information was still visible Sunday morning, before disappearing in the afternoon. Despite receiving many requests from the media, the auction house did not want to react.
