Auctions of Nazi bric-a-brac and Wehrmacht weapons always cause outrage. But the auction that the Felzmann auction house in Neuss had planned for this Monday had a different quality. The title sounded noble, as if it were an exhibition in the German Historical Museum: “The System of Terror Vol. II 1933–1945”. But instead of clarifying this terror system, its testimonies should only be sold, including several hundred letters from concentration camp prisoners, Jewish stars “with signs of wear” and documents from the concentration camp administrative apparatus. In total there were over 600 lots, some of which came from a private researcher.
But after the increasingly loud protests of the past few days, the house that specializes in stamps has now canceled the auction. The event has not been listed on the website since Sunday and the online catalog has also been deleted.
The International Auschwitz Committee, among others, had sharply criticized it: “For those persecuted by the Nazis and survivors of the Holocaust, this auction is a cynical and shameless undertaking,” explained Executive Vice President Christoph Heubner in a press release. “Documents of persecution and the Holocaust belong to the families of the persecuted. They should be displayed in museums or … memorials and not reduced to commercial objects.”
“No business may be conducted with such documents.”
The Frankfurt Fritz Bauer Institute, an independent institution that researches the Holocaust, also commented in detail. The institute writes on its website that “business may not be conducted with such documents.” Evidence of Nazi crimes must be “entrusted to public archives and memorials.” Only here would they be “professionally preserved for the future, recorded, stored and, taking their provenance into account, made available to an interested public.”
The institute is not only outraged by the sale itself, but has also analyzed the “cynical exploitation logic” in the catalog: letters from concentration camp prisoners with lower prisoner numbers are rarer and therefore more expensive than those from prisoners with higher numbers. Letters with drawings have a higher starting bid than less decorative copies. The high price of a prisoner’s document from 1943 is explained by the fact that “there were only a few Jews alive at that time.”
The handling of personal rights is also irresponsible. The medical report of a man who was forcibly sterilized in the Dachau concentration camp was offered and could also be viewed online. The report not only certifies that he has “congenital imbecility,” but also notes that he has five children. In a public archive, such a document would only be made accessible under certain conditions in order to protect relatives. At the request of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The auction house had explained that private collectors also made a “contribution to historical reappraisal”. The auction is not about “trading in suffering”, but rather about “preservation”.