“We continuously appeal for all post-camp memorabilia to be donated to the Auschwitz Museum,” said the museum’s spokesperson, Bartosz Bartyzel. These words were spoken in response to reports about a planned auction in Germany offering items from the period of German terror during World War II. “They will be protected, preserved, studied and displayed here. This is where they belong,” he stressed.
“Every object and document is of enormous importance to us and should find its place in the museum’s collections and archives. They will be protected, preserved, studied and displayed here. This is where they belong. That is why we continuously appeal for all post-camp memorabilia to be donated to the museum,” Bartyzel declared.
The spokesperson added that the institution in Oświęcim strives to monitor such situations. In a post published on Sunday afternoon on the X platform, the museum reminded the public that the Auschwitz Memorial is “not only a vast site with authentic post-camp buildings and ruins.”
“It is also objects and documents connected to the history of the German Nazi camp and its victims, items of particular character, meaning and symbolism. Memory is not granted once and for all. As the last Survivors pass away, we must strive together to build it on what remains,” the institution stated.
The Felzmann Auction House in Neuss was scheduled to begin the sale on Monday of a private collection containing documents and items related to victims of German crimes. The International Auschwitz Committee was among those who protested, as did the Polish authorities. Rafał Leśkiewicz, spokesperson for the President of the Republic of Poland (PR), Karol Nawrocki, stated that the president is appealing to the Polish government to demand the return of the memorabilia, and, if necessary, to purchase them.
According to the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the list of objects designated for sale at the Felzmann Auction House includes 623 items. Among the documents is a letter from an Auschwitz prisoner “with a very low number” addressed to someone in Kraków. The starting price was set at 500 euros. A medical diagnosis from the Dachau concentration camp concerning the forced sterilization of a prisoner was priced at 400 euros. A Gestapo file card with information about the execution of a Jewish prisoner in the Mackheim ghetto in July 1942 was to have a starting price of 350 euros. The catalogue also includes an anti-Jewish propaganda poster and a Jewish star from the Buchenwald camp.