AP
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Poland’s foreign minister mentioned Sunday that an “offensive” auction of Holocaust artifacts has been canceled in Germany, relaying info from his German counterpart, following complaints from Holocaust survivors.
Radoslaw Sikorski made the feedback on the X platform, saying he and German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul “agreed that such a scandal must be prevented.” The high Polish diplomat thanked Wadephul for the data that the auction was canceled.
Earlier, a Holocaust survivors group known as on the German auction home Felzmann to cancel Monday’s sale of tons of of Holocaust artifacts, together with letters written by prisoners and different paperwork that establish many individuals by identify.
An inventory of details about the auction on the Auktionhaus Felzmann web site on Sunday morning was now not on the positioning by mid-afternoon. The home didn’t instantly reply to calls, an e mail and a textual content message on Sunday.
The assortment of over 600 tons at auction in western Neuss, close to Düsseldorf, included letters written by prisoners from German focus camps to family members at dwelling, Gestapo index playing cards and different perpetrator paperwork, the German information company dpa reported. The auction was titled “The System of Terror.”
“For victims of Nazi persecution and Holocaust survivors, this auction is a cynical and shameless undertaking that leaves them outraged and speechless,” Christoph Heubner, an government vp of The International Auschwitz Committee, a Berlin-based group of survivors, mentioned in a press release on Saturday.
“Their history and the suffering of all those persecuted and murdered by the Nazis is being exploited for commercial gain,” he added. The committee mentioned the names of people have been identifiable in lots of of the paperwork.
Heubner mentioned such paperwork of persecution and the Holocaust “belong to the families of the victims. They should be displayed in museums or memorial exhibitions and not degraded to mere commodities.”
“We urge those responsible at the Felzmann auction house to show some basic decency and cancel the auction,” he added.