WRAP: German war crimes victims' items removed from auction after Poland's reaction
Memorabilia belonging to victims of German terror, which were to be sold through an auction in Germany, have been removed from the auction house's website following Poland's reaction, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has announced.
The Felzmann Auction House in Neuss, western Germany, was originally scheduled to start selling a private collection of documents and items related to the victims of Nazi German war crimes on Monday.
Reacting to the news, Polish President Karol Nawrocki's spokesman wrote on X on Sunday that the president had demanded that the government take action regarding the auction.
Rafal Leskiewicz added that Nawrocki "expects the Polish government to demand the return, and ultimately buy out all the memorabilia of the victims of German crimes on Polish soil, and add the cost of this undertaking to the general bill of reparation claims."
Earlier, the International Auschwitz Committee (IAC) and the Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt am Main had also protested against the auction.
Maciej Wewior, spokesman for the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, addressed the matter in a post on X on Sunday: "We are appealing not so much for the suspension, but for the complete cancellation of this auction... and for their return to institutions and memorial sites where they can fulfill their proper role as a testament to that time and a document for future generations."
"Items related to the crimes of World War II should never enter commercial circulation," he added.
Poland's Culture Minister Marta Cienkowska earlier said that the auction of the victims' memorabilia is unacceptable and must be cancelled.
She added that the Polish ambassador in Berlin had already been informed of the matter. "I have asked him for an immediate and decisive response. We will unequivocally demand the return of these objects to Poland. Memory is not for sale and never will be," Cienkowska added.
On Sunday afternoon, Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski reported on X that he had spoken with his German counterpart Johann Wadephul about the planned auction of items from the German terror period of World War II and they both agreed that "such a scandal" should be prevented.
Shortly after that, Sikorski also reported on X that the Polish ambassador to Germany Jan Tombinski, "who has been intervening with the Westphalia authorities on this matter for several days, informed me that all artifacts have already disappeared from the website of the scandalous auction."
"The memory of the victims of the Holocaust is not a commodity and cannot be traded commercially. Polish diplomacy is appealing for the return of artifacts to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial State Museum in Oswiecim," he added.
The list of items for sale at the Felzmann Auction House, as reported by the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), included 623 items. Among the documents was a letter from an Auschwitz prisoner "with a very low number" to an addressee in the southern Polish city of Krakow. The starting bid was EUR 500.
A medical diagnosis on a forced sterilisation of a prisoner at the former Nazi German concentration camp in Dachau, southern Germany, was valued at EUR 400.
A Gestapo file card with information about the execution of a Jewish prisoner in the Mackheim ghetto [in Makow Mazowiecki in central-eastern Poland) in July 1942 had a starting bid of EUR 350. The catalogue also included an anti-Jewish propaganda poster and a Jewish Star of David from the Buchenwald German Nazi concentration camp near Weimar, Germany.
FAZ wrote that the first part of the private collection had been sold six years ago and the buyers are located, among others, in America.
In response to a question from FAZ, the Felzmann Auction House stated that private collectors conduct intensive research and contribute to the advancement of historical knowledge and that their activities serve to preserve memory, not to trade in suffering.
Commenting on Felzmann's position, the FAZ journalist wrote that there was no guarantee that the auction participants' goal was to preserve memory. They could very well be individuals with far-right views. She argued that banning the sale of such documents would not be a solution, as it could lead to the auction being moved to the dark market or abroad. "We can only appeal for such collections to be donated to public institutions to commemorate the victims," FAZ wrote. (PAP)
mmr/mj
