Dutch prosecutors have successfully blocked the eBay listing of a bar of soap dating back to the Nazi era, the Daily Mail reported Friday, after it claimed to be made from "the fat of Jewish Holocaust victims."
A Dutch owner attempted to hawk the soap on the auctioning site for a starting price of 199 euro ($215); however, moderators on the site removed the post seconds after it went live.
The antiquities vendor then handed himself in to police for questioning shortly after the sale was cancelled; in doing so, he also handed over two bars of soap now being tested for traces of human remains.
Historian Arthur Haraf linked the soap to Nazi concentration camp Westerbork, a prime camp for Dutch Jews in the northeastern Netherlands. Haraf noted that the sale of the soap is a "terrible crime" - not only due to its possible contents, but because any property from the camp belongs to the museum on the site.
Jewish groups responded with disgust to the sale.
"It is saddening and disgusting to find out that there are people interested in gaining money from the Holocaust," spokesperson for the Dutch Jewish organization CIDI, Ron Eisenman, told the daily. "We can only watch and hope that collectors will use healthy logic and will not participate in these things."
In November 2013, eBay removed Holocaust memorabilia salesfrom its site after another expose from the Daily Mail, but other auctions - including the sale of Adolf Hitler's furniture and a rare edition of Mein Kampfin French auction houses - have been subject to various legal battles before being cancelled or retracted.