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A group of Holocaust survivors is demanding a German auction house cancel the sale of hundreds of Holocaust artifacts, including letters written by prisoners and other documents that identify many people by name.
The International Auschwitz Committee, a Berlin-based group of survivors, called for the cancellation of the “eccentric and shameless” auction – titled “The System of Terror” and which was scheduled to be held on Monday by the Felzmann auction house.
The collection of more than 600 lots at the auction in western Neuss, near Düsseldorf, included letters written by prisoners of German concentration camps to loved ones at home, gestapo German news agency dpa reported that index cards and other incriminating documents.
“For the victims Nazi For survivors of persecution and genocide, this auction is a reprehensible and shameless undertaking that leaves them angry and speechless, Christoph Huebner, the committee’s executive vice president, said in a statement Saturday.
“Their history and the suffering of all those persecuted and killed by the Nazis are being exploited for commercial gain,” he said. The committee said that the names of individuals in many of the documents were recognizable.
Huebner said that such documents of persecution and genocide “belong to the families of the victims. They should be displayed in museums or memorial exhibitions and should not be kept as mere objects.”
“We urge those responsible at the Felzman auction house to show some basic decency and cancel the auction,” he said.
A listing of information about the auction on the Auctionhaus Felzmann website Sunday morning was no longer on the site as of mid-afternoon. The House did not immediately respond to calls, emails and text messages on Sunday.