An auction house in Neuss, North Rhine-Westphalia, intends to put up for sale items that belonged to German victims of the Second World War. The highest starting prices reach several tens of thousands of euros. The artifacts contain personal data of those who were murdered. The International Auschwitz Committee is appealing for “elementary decency and the cancellation of the auction.”
“Shocking. A German auction house is trading in the belongings of victims of German barbarity. One can buy original documents of Polish men and women from the Warsaw and Litzmannstadt ghettos, and from the Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Ravensbrück camps. […] Check whether any items of your relatives are there,”
wrote Cezary Gmyz, a contributor to TV Republika, on X.
The catalogue shows that the items intended for sale include, among others, a workbook of a Polish forced labourer from a concentration camp, Jewish stars, certificates issued to Polish camp prisoners, and undelivered letters from mothers to their detained children. Among the most expensive exhibits (with a starting price of 12,000 euros) is a collection of correspondence from a Jewish family from Wierszów. Many documents contain personal data and names.
The plans of the auction house prompted a firm response from Christoph Heubner, vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee. “The suffering of all those persecuted and murdered by the Nazis is being exploited for commercial gain,” he said. He stressed that documents relating to persecution and the Holocaust belong to the families and the victims and should not be treated as ordinary merchandise.
The organizers of the auction did not respond to the accusations. The sale is scheduled for Monday.