Overview
- The Neuss-based Auktionshaus Felzmann scheduled a sale for Monday titled "Das System des Terrors Vol. II 1933–1945" featuring concentration-camp letters, Gestapo files, an anti-Jewish propaganda poster and a Jewish star from Buchenwald described as showing signs of use.
- International Auschwitz Committee executive vice president Christoph Heubner called the planned sale a cynical and shameless undertaking and urged the auction house to cancel it.
- The Fritz Bauer Institute issued a statement rejecting commercial trade in documents of Nazi persecution, warning that such sales subject victims’ records to a logic of exploitation and can violate personality rights.
- Felzmann defended the auction in comments to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, arguing that private collectors conduct intensive research that preserves memory rather than trading in suffering.
- A spokesperson for Poland’s president, Rafał Leśkiewicz, wrote on X that the president expects the government to demand the return or, if necessary, purchase of victims’ memorabilia and to add any costs to a broader reparations account.