The Felzmann auction house in Neuss, western Germany, was scheduled to begin the sale on Monday as part of a 623-item private collection linked to victims of both Nazi German and, according to Poland’s Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression (UdSKiOR), Soviet wartime crimes.
Among the objects were a telegram sent by prisoner Umiński from the Starobilsk camp and an envelope from a letter written by Jan Leszczyński, held in the Ostashkov camp – both associated with the Katyn executions carried out by Soviet security forces.
Lech Parell, head of UdSKiOR, said he had written to the auction house demanding that the items be withdrawn and transferred to appropriate Polish museum collections.
"We oppose the trade of such memorabilia, including those left behind by relatives of the victims murdered in 1940 by the Soviet regime," he wrote, adding that such artefacts form part of "family and national memory."
The Katyn massacre of 1940 was a series of mass executions carried out by the Soviet NKVD, targeting around 22,000 Polish military officers, police and intellectuals.
The planned sale also included documents from Nazi German camps such as an early-numbered Auschwitz prisoner letter, a Dachau medical report on forced sterilisation, a Gestapo file card documenting the execution of a Jewish prisoner in 1942, an antisemitic propaganda poster and a Jewish star from Buchenwald.
The International Auschwitz Committee and the Polish government both objected to the auction.
Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, said on Sunday that the items had been removed from the auction house’s website following interventions by Polish diplomats, including ambassador Jan Tombiński.
Sikorski added that he and his German counterpart, Johann Wadephul, agreed the sale should not go ahead.
UdSKiOR said the listing had caused significant public concern in Poland and prompted numerous critical responses from civil society groups.
(ał)
Source: PAP