A planned auction in Germany of artifacts belonging to Nazi concentration camp prisoners has been cancelled following widespread condemnation from Holocaust survivors, politicians, and Jewish organizations, the BBC reported on Sunday.
According to the report, Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister Radoslaw Sikorski announced that the sale had been called off, thanking his German counterpart Johann Wadephul for agreeing that “such a scandal must be prevented.”
The auction, scheduled for Monday by Auktionshaus Felzmann in Neuss, reportedly included over 600 items, among them a letter from an Auschwitz prisoner and a medical report detailing the forced sterilization of a Dachau inmate.
“Respect for victims requires the dignity of silence, not the din of commerce,” Sikorski wrote on X.
By Sunday afternoon, the auction listing had been removed from the Felzmann website.
German State Minister for Culture Wolfram Weimer told the dpa news agency: “Documents or expert reports by Nazi perpetrators that were offered at the auction are not for private collections.” He added that steps should be taken to prevent similar auctions in the future.
Christoph Heubner, executive vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee (IAC), had condemned the sale, saying, “For victims of Nazi persecution and Holocaust survivors, this auction is a cynical and shameless undertaking that leaves them outraged and speechless.”
Heubner emphasized that the items “belong to the families of the victims” and should be preserved in museums or memorial exhibitions, not “degraded to mere commodities.”
Many of the items slated for auction were said to originate from the Auschwitz and Buchenwald camps.