Germany Cancels Auction of Holocaust Artifacts After Backlash; 87th Kristallnacht Anniv. Nov. 9, 1938

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AP News, Updated 11:43 AM EST, Nov. 16, 2025

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, titled 'The System of Terror' 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.” ---
https://apnews.com/article/holocaust-auschwitz-auction-felzmann-germany-9f127f2235ca000b62aa566c9cc35059
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- Israeli survivors of Kristallnacht mark 87th anniversary of Nazi riots amid rising antisemitism, AP News, Nov. 9, 2025.
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JERUSALEM (AP) — Walter Bingham was 14 years old when Nazis plundered Jewish businesses and places of worship across Germany and Austria in what became known as Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass.”

Bingham is among a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors marking the 87th anniversary of Kristallnacht Sunday, at a time when antisemitism is on the rise, especially in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.

The Nov. 9, 1938, attack was a stark turning point in the escalating persecution that led to the killing of 6 million European Jews by the Nazis and their supporters during the Holocaust...
https://apnews.com/article/israel-holocaust-germany-kristallnacht-anniversary-survivors-nazis-8c9727af30c8cef04759960ad15a1779

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1. Survivors of Kristallnacht Mark 87th Anniversary of Nazi Riots on Nov. 9 - 10, 1938

Last edited Mon Nov 17, 2025, 11:02 AM - Edit history (1)

- Holocaust Survivors Remember Kristallnacht, the Night That Changed Everything. Nov. 2025, 6 mins.
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- KRISTALLNACHT, Holocaust Encylopedia.
On the night of November 9–10, 1938, Nazi German leaders unleashed a nationwide anti-Jewish riot. The violence was supposed to look like an unplanned outburst of popular anger against Jews. In reality, this was state-sponsored vandalism, arson, and terror. This event came to be called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). It is also referred to as the November Pogrom.

KEY FACTS 1 During Kristallnacht, Nazis burned more than 1,400 synagogues, vandalized thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, broke into Jewish people’s apartments and homes, and desecrated Jewish religious objects. They also humiliated, assaulted, and killed Jewish people.

2 As part of Kristallnacht, the German police imprisoned about 26,000 Jewish men in concentration camps just because they were Jewish.

3 In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, the Nazi regime ordered the Jewish community to pay a 1 billion Reichsmark “atonement payment.” The regime also rapidly enacted many anti-Jewish laws and decrees.

Listen to the human-read audio version
Kristallnacht was a nationwide, violent anti-Jewish riot that took place throughout Nazi Germany on November 9 and 10, 1938. During Kristallnacht, groups of Nazis and other Germans targeted Jewish places of worship, stores and businesses, homes, and people. The perpetrators included Nazi Party officials and members of Nazi Party organizations, especially the SA, SS, and Hitler Youth. German civilians unaffiliated with these Nazi organizations also participated. Many took the opportunity to steal items from vandalized Jewish homes and businesses, and to publicly humiliate their Jewish neighbors.

Top Nazi leaders coordinated and instigated the Kristallnacht riot. However, they intended for it to look like an unplanned outburst of popular anger against Jews. They portrayed the violence as a spontaneous response to a Jewish teenager’s assassination of a minor German diplomat. But the violence was not spontaneous. Nazi officials used the incident as an excuse to launch the riot.

Kristallnacht was state-sponsored vandalism and arson. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and other top Nazis actively coordinated the riot with the support of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

"Kristallnacht": nationwide pogrom...
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht

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2. DW News, Germany (Deutsche Welle), Auction of Holocaust Items Cancelled After Outrage, Nov.16, 2025

- DW News. An auction of items and documents from victims of the Holocaust has been called off following an international outcry. The Auschwitz Committee called auctioning such items as worn Stars of David "cynical and shameless." Many items from the Buchenwald concentration camp appeared in the auction.

An auction of items and documents from Holocaust victims was canceled on Sunday, a day before it was scheduled to take place in Neuss, a city near Düsseldorf in western Germany. The head of the auction house confirmed the auction was called off to Nathanael Liminski, a senior official in the regional government of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, a spokesman for Liminski said, the dpa news agency reported.

Before the cancellation, the International Auschwitz Committee (IAC) had urged the Felzmann auction house not to hold the event. IAC Executive Vice President Christoph Heubner called the auction "cynical and shameless." Heubner said in a statement that the history of Holocaust survivors was "being exploited for commercial gain."

"Documents relating to persecution and the Holocaust belong to the families of those who were persecuted," he said. "They should be displayed in museums or in exhibitions at memorial sites and not be degraded to objects of trade."

Politicians welcome auction's cancellation
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski also called the auction "offensive." In a post on X, he wrote he and German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul "agreed that such a scandal must be prevented" and later said he was pleased to hear it had been called off... More,
https://www.dw.com/en/auction-of-holocaust-items-canceled-after-outrage/a-74761373

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3. Continued, DW News Article...

Auction of Holocaust items canceled after outrage, DW, 11/16/2025.

Cont.. Welcoming the cancellation, German State Minister for Culture Wolfram Weimer told dpa he expected steps to be taken to prevent such auctions in the future. "Documents or expert reports by Nazi perpetrators that were offered at the auction are not for private collections," he said. "These historical documents of suffering and crime belong in memorials, museums and research institutions."

What was to be auctioned? In a listing that has been removed from its website, Felzmann had described a trove of documents in its auction titled "System of Terror Vol II," with items dating from 1933 to 1945.

Among the various items were Nazi documents on a forced sterilization carried out at the Dachau concentration camp. The auction would have included records of companies forcefully sold to Nazis, as well as identification documents and passports of Jews who managed to flee persecution to Chile and Argentina. It featured "life saving documents" like a release form for a prisoner who was able to leave the Mauthausen concentration camp.

In one of the most personal items, the auction house was preparing for bidding on three journal notebooks of an anonymous Polish Jew who survived the war in Poland. Controversially, the auction also nearly included worn Stars of David from the Buchenwald concentration camp and also a Star of David armband. --