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Germany cancels auction of Holocaust artifacts after backlash
AP News ^ | Updated 10:43 AM CST, November 16, 2025 | Associated Press

Posted on 11/16/2025 4:24:34 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum

BERLIN (AP) — Poland’s foreign minister said Sunday that an “offensive” auction of Holocaust artifacts has been canceled in Germany, relaying information from his German counterpart, following complaints from Holocaust survivors.

Radoslaw Sikorski made the comments on the X platform, saying he and German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul “agreed that such a scandal must be prevented.” The top Polish diplomat thanked Wadephul for the information that the auction was canceled.

Earlier, a Holocaust survivors group called on the German auction house Felzmann to cancel Monday’s sale of hundreds of Holocaust artifacts, including letters written by prisoners and other documents that identify many people by name.

A listing of information about the auction on the Auktionhaus Felzmann website on Sunday morning was no longer on the site by mid-afternoon. The house did not immediately respond to calls, an email and a text message on Sunday.

The collection of over 600 lots at auction in western Neuss, near Düsseldorf, included letters written by prisoners from German concentration camps to loved ones at home, Gestapo index cards and other perpetrator documents, the German news agency 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 executive vice president of The International Auschwitz Committee, a Berlin-based group of survivors, said in a statement 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 said the names of individuals were identifiable in many of the documents.

Heubner said such documents of persecution and the Holocaust “belong to the families of the victims. They should be displayed in museums or memorial exhibitions and not degraded...”

(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
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1 posted on 11/16/2025 4:24:34 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Good Lord, don’t the Germans ever learn. Unless they were trying to impress their new jew-hating overlords, the muslims from Turkey and the rest of the unwashed mohammedans from the middle east turdbowl. Oh well, I guess the Germans weren’t truly sorry for the misery they caused, they were only sorry they lost?


2 posted on 11/16/2025 4:29:07 PM PST by john drake (Lucius Accius-Roman,170 BC - "oderint dum metuant" translated "Let them hate so long as they fear")
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Thanks Germany and thanks Poland (where many of the murder factories operated).


3 posted on 11/16/2025 4:30:58 PM PST by faithhopecharity ("Politicians aren't born, they're excreted." Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 to 43 BCE))
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To: faithhopecharity

Occupied Poland


4 posted on 11/16/2025 4:32:35 PM PST by stanne
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Without these artifacts and other documentation, it would be much easier to say the Holocaust never existed, wouldn’t it?

Preserving and curating these items is a necessary part of maintaining accurate history.


5 posted on 11/16/2025 4:37:06 PM PST by proxy_user
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To: stanne

Correct. Poland lost the largest percentage of its citizens of any nation involved in WW2, approximately 17%, of which a large percentage of that number were native Jews. Both Germans and Russians murdered native Poles, with special note to the Soviets murdering 20,000 Polish military officers, political leaders, intellectuals, academicians, etc. in the Katyn Forest Massacre in 1940. Occupied Poland indeed.


6 posted on 11/16/2025 4:39:06 PM PST by john drake (Lucius Accius-Roman,170 BC - "oderint dum metuant" translated "Let them hate so long as they fear")
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To: faithhopecharity

Poland (where many of the murder factories operated).


There was no Poland, then.


7 posted on 11/16/2025 4:42:18 PM PST by dfwgator ("I am Charlie Kirk!")
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To: All

Any lampshades in the auction? That would be in poor taste.


8 posted on 11/16/2025 4:44:32 PM PST by BipolarBob (These violent delights have violent ends.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

IMHO ... Germany should never have existed after WW2 ... or for that fact after WW1 ...


9 posted on 11/16/2025 4:48:51 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Am Yisrael Chai ~)
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To: SkyDancer
IMHO ... Germany should never have existed after WW2 ... or for that fact after WW1 ...

A final solution for the German problem. 🤡

10 posted on 11/16/2025 4:51:18 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (I have no answers. Only questions.)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

What Germany did during those two wars was unconscionable. The slaughter of those innocents is beyond the pale of a civilized county.


11 posted on 11/16/2025 4:52:33 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Am Yisrael Chai ~)
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To: dfwgator
There was no Poland, then.

Maybe you have the wars mixed up. Poland didn't exist during World War I, but it certainly existed in World War II.

12 posted on 11/16/2025 4:55:00 PM PST by Right_Wing_Madman
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To: SkyDancer
What Germany did during those two wars was unconscionable. The slaughter of those innocents is beyond the pale of a civilized county.

So there should have been a final solution for the Germany problem?

13 posted on 11/16/2025 4:58:57 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum (I have no answers. Only questions.)
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To: SkyDancer
IMHO ... Germany should never have existed after WW2 ... or for that fact after WW1 ...

Why? Do you think post-1945 Europe didn't work?

How would you eliminate Germany without a massive genocide or ethnic cleansing campaign, as bad as the war itself?

14 posted on 11/16/2025 5:03:23 PM PST by Right_Wing_Madman
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To: SkyDancer

Kaiser Wilhelm should have been prosecuted as a war criminal after WW1. He was saved by his British royal family relatives.


15 posted on 11/16/2025 5:11:50 PM PST by DFG
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To: proxy_user

Doesn’t say who owns these- private parties?
I thought ownership of this type of material outside museums was prohibited.


16 posted on 11/16/2025 5:28:57 PM PST by sistergoldenhair
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To: Right_Wing_Madman

Nope, it was called the “Gouvernement General”, totally run by the Germans.


17 posted on 11/16/2025 6:21:40 PM PST by dfwgator ("I am Charlie Kirk!")
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

No. It’s what they did. Period.


18 posted on 11/16/2025 8:36:53 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Am Yisrael Chai ~)
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To: Right_Wing_Madman

Patton said that Germany should be turned into a big farmland.


19 posted on 11/16/2025 8:37:36 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Am Yisrael Chai ~)
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To: DFG

Exactly. It was a prelude to what Germany did in WW2.


20 posted on 11/16/2025 8:38:09 PM PST by SkyDancer ( ~ Am Yisrael Chai ~)
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