By COLlive staff
As Europe marked the 81st anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Chairman of the European Jewish Association Rabbi Menachem Margolin has had to write to a Munich Auction house asking them to cancel the sale of items belonging to infamous Nazis Hess, Goring, Himmler and Hitler himself.
Hermann Historica will be holding an auction on the 20th November that includes a number of pieces for sale from the Nazi leadership including framed photographs, silver dinner services, plates, letters and Jewellery belonging to Goring’s wife.
In his letter to the Auction House, Rabbi Margolin said:
“I am writing to respectfully ask you to withdraw the auction. This is not a legal appeal to you, but very much a moral one. What you are doing is not illegal, but it is wrong.
“I need not remind you of the many millions of lives lost as a result of national socialism, nor of the approximately six million Jewish lives that were lost due to mindless antisemitic hatred. This is history.
“Yet today, across Europe and including Germany (which now has the highest recorded cases in Europe), antisemitism in on the rise, and we believe the sale of such memorabilia has little intrinsic historical value but instead will be bought by those who glorify and seek to justify the actions of the greatest evil to affect Europe. The trade therefore in such items should simply not take place.
“In Israel recently there was a case of a letter written by a child murdered in the holocaust that was put up for sale. This went to court, and the ensuing public pressure resulted in the cancelling of the sale. The message from society was clear and unambiguous: some things simply cannot be traded.
“It is in this spirit of understanding that I ask you again to withdraw the Nazi auction items, again not because of any illegality, but instead to send a message that some things particularly when so metaphorically blood soaked, should not and must not be traded.”
Absolutely ridiculous. Why on earth should these things not be bought and sold? Because one person doesn’t like it? Let him not buy any of these things. The fact that some people have them and other people want them should be enough to justify the sale. WHAT RIGHT DOES HE HAVE to demand that the owners of these things be deprived of the money they can get for them? Is he going to give them that money from his pocket? No, of course not. But he wants them to be poorer than they should be, just so he can feel… Read more »
It’s ridiculous that you feel that it is acceptable for anyone to profit from the obscene behavior and notoriety of those evil inhuman beings. How they came to possess those objects is questionable to begin with. To now sell them because they belonged to …… is to give those dead criminals more recognition
You miss the point of the rabbi’s appeal and show no understanding of today’s neo-Nazi culture. These are not value-neutral items that auction houses legitimately market all the time, but items owned by some of the most willfully evil people in history, and therefore they are intrinsically tainted. Further, the likely purchasers of these items will not be buying them for use in their homes, because they could use a nice silver platter, etc., but rather to preserve the memory and glorify the previous owners. For the millions who died because of the ideology and actions of these monsters and… Read more »
Our job is to move forward and not dwell on the past. Learn from, sure. Not dwell on. The holocaust wasn’t so long ago and look where we are. The emancipation was much longer ago and look where they are. We can’t worry about Hitler, Herod, or the Czar. We have to look forward.
Let them buy and sell their memorabilia. Let them tattoo themselves with swastikas. Let them say “Heil H., etc”. We’ll outlive them anyway.
Lori Kaye didn’t outlive them… your attitude is dangerous.
These things are traded regularly through auction houses. This is not new. A counter point can be made, that by keeping these things in present day consciousness, it can serve as a reminder to the past. Getting rid of and/or burying the past, will ensure that it is forgotten. This memorabilia is real, just like its previous owners were real. Never Forget.