The Daily Populous Monday November 17th, 2025 morning edition
Authored by apnews.com and submitted by AudibleNod

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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 to mere commodities.”

“We urge those responsible at the Felzmann auction house to show some basic decency and cancel the auction,” he added.

Erik_the_Human on November 16th, 2025 at 21:24 UTC »

I strongly believe things like that have a single purpose in this world - to exist in a museum in the care of academics, to be used to remind us that we are capable of awful things and should be on guard against them, and resist traveling down those paths again.

Holocaust artifacts do not belong in private hands, ever. That's ghoulish.

ElPrieto8 on November 16th, 2025 at 19:35 UTC »

How long was this planned? How many people put eyes on the plan without SOMEONE saying, "I don't think this is the best idea"?

AudibleNod on November 16th, 2025 at 19:24 UTC »

> 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.

That's pretty fucking grim. Who greenlit this?