This was Wadephul's first comment on the auction of memorabilia and documents of prisoners of German Nazi concentration camps by the Felzmann Auction House in Neuss, which was ultimately canceled, among others. after protests from Poland.
“Something like this is simply absolutely unacceptable and we must be aware that we have an ethical obligation to the victims to prevent such actions“, said the German Foreign Minister at the beginning of his foreign trip to several Balkan countries.
A diplomat quoted by the DPA news agency said that talked to the head of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Radosław Sikorski, about the “unbelievable procedure”. The two were said to have “completely agreed that the attempt to make business out of the crime of the Holocaust is abhorrent and must be stopped.”
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What comments did Minister Wadephul make about the auction?
What was the subject of the controversial auction?
What actions did the Polish authorities take in this matter?
What did Radosław Sikorski say about the disappearance of artifacts?
The head of German diplomacy said that he “expects that the whole matter will be clarified and (…) such auctions will not take place in Germany.”
The scandalous auction in Germany will not take place
The Felzmann Auction House in Neuss was to start the sale of a private collection on Monday, including documents and objects related to the victims of German and Soviet crimes during World War II. Among others, he protested against the auction. International Auschwitz Committee, as well as the Polish authorities.
The list of objects intended for sale by the Felzmann Auction House in Neuss – as reported by the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” newspaper – included 623 items. Among the documents was a letter from a prisoner from Auschwitz “with a very low number” to an addressee in Krakow. The starting price was to be 500 euros. A medical diagnosis from the Dachau concentration camp regarding the forced sterilization of a prisoner was valued at EUR 400. A card from the Gestapo file with information about the execution of a Jewish prisoner in the Mackheim ghetto in July 1942 was supposed to have a starting price of EUR 350. The catalog also included an anti-Jewish propaganda poster and a Star of David from the Buchenwald concentration camp.
The head of Polish diplomacy, Radosław Sikorski, announced on Sunday on the X platform that all artifacts that were to be auctioned in Germany had disappeared from its website. Sikorski noted that Jan Tombiński, the head of the Polish embassy in Germany, had been intervening in this matter for several days.
