Jewels linked to Nazism to be auctioned despite criticism

Jewels belonging to Austrian billionaire Heidi Horten – whose husband founded his fortune under the Nazi regime – are being auctioned on Wednesday, despite criticism from several Jewish groups.

Auction house Christie’s plans to sell 700 pieces before the end of the year. The entire collection is estimated to be worth $150 million (€136.64 million). Some 152 jewels have been on the site for sale online as of last week, and 96 pieces are being auctioned in person in Geneva on Wednesday, followed by another 154 on Friday.

The remaining 300 gems are expected to be sold online in November 2023.

The collection includes rare pieces by 20th century designers including Bulgari, Harry Winston, Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels. His owner, Heidi Horten, died last year at age 81 with a fortune estimated by Forbes to be nearly $2.9 billion.

Jewelry sales are likely to top previous records set by Christie’s – Elizabeth Taylor’s 2011 collection and the “Maharajas and Mughal Magnificence” collection in 2019, both worth more than $100 million.

A stained past

Heidi Horten’s husband, Helmut Horten, made his fortune, at least partially, by exploiting Jewish businesses in Nazi Germany. In 1936, after Adolf Hitler took power in Germany, Horten took over a company in the western city of Duisburg after its Jewish owners fled. He later took over several other department stores and properties owned by prewar Jews.

“He laid the foundation of his wealth during the Third Reich by acquiring cheap companies at liquidation prices from Jewish businesses under duress,” said David de Jong, author of Nazi Billionaires – The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties, The New York Times newspaper.

Separately, his wife hired a historian through the Helmut Horten Foundation to investigate the source of his fortune and discovered that Horten had been a member of the Nazi party before being expelled for unexplained reasons.

Calls to stop the auctions

Several Jewish groups demanded that the auction be suspended.

“This is a moral issue. This auction is doubly indecent,” Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), said in a statement on Tuesday.. “Not only are the funds used to acquire these jewels in part derived from the Aryanization of Jewish property carried out by Nazi Germany, but in addition, this sale is to fund a foundation whose mission is to ensure the posterity of a former Jewish man’s surname. Nazi!”

Aryanization refers to the Nazi practice of seizing businesses owned by Jews and transferring them to non-Jews to destroy their economic position.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization, said in a statement that the auction house “must suspend this sale until full research into the connection to Nazi-era acquisitions has been completed.”

Echoing his statements, the American Jewish Committee criticized Christie’s decision give an unspecified amount of the sale to Holocaust research and education organizations.

“Instead, the auction should be suspended until a serious effort is made to determine what part of that wealth came from Nazi victims,” ​​he said.

Meanwhile, Christie’s defended its position.

“The foundation and Christie’s know that all proceeds go to charities, the charities are child protection and welfare, medical research and access to the arts,” Rahul Kadakia, international head of jewelry at Christie’s, told the agency. of AFP news.

“Christie’s separately is making a significant donation to Holocaust research and education,” he said. “We believe that, in the end, the product of the sale will be good and this is the reason why we decided to take on the project.”

mk/sms (AFP, Christie’s)