A blockbuster jewelry auction at Christie’s is drawing criticism because of the gems association with a nazi,
The pieces sold Monday belonged to the late Heidi Horten, the Austrian art collector whose husband Helmut Horten was a Nazi Party Member. The items fetched a total of $202 million, making it the largest jewelry sale in auction history.
demanded to stop the sale
Some Jewish groups urged Christie’s to stop the sale, citing Helmut Horten’s records during the sale. nazi era, when he amassed a fortune after buying up businesses whose Jewish owners sold them under duress, often at heavily discounted prices. Horton used that money to further grow his company, which was ultimately responsible for introducing American-style supermarkets to Germany.
“Don’t reward those whose families earned money from desperate Jews targeted and feared by the Nazis.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper
Heidi Horton was born in 1941 and was more than 30 years younger than her husband. When he died in 1987, he inherited nearly $1 billion the new York Times, Heidi Horton passed away last year at the age of 81.
Associations representing Jews and Holocaust survivors criticized the auction because of the wealth origination they paid for the jewels. David Schachter, president of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA, said the auction continues “a shameful pattern of whitewashing Holocaust profiteers”. many times,
Christie’s should suspend this sale pending full research. [into the] Links to Nazi-era Inquisition [is] completed,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said in a statement earlier this month that urged Christie’s to halt the auction. “Don’t reward those whose families were targeted by the Nazis. and extorted money from fearful, desperate Jews.”
Christie’s also drew criticism for not initially including any mention of Jewish businesses in its marketing materials for the auction. Its website now includes a brief note saying that the origins of Horton’s wealth “are a matter of public record. Mr. Horton’s business practices during the Nazi era, when he bought Jewish businesses sold under duress, are well known.” are documented.
The auction house has committed to donating a portion of its commissions to organizations that contribute to Holocaust research and education. It did not specify which organizations would receive the funding, only saying in a statement that it would be up to those organizations to “communicate about these donations.”
Proceeds from the sale of the jewelry will be donated to the Heidi Horton Foundation, which supports children’s welfare and medical research, in addition to funding the Heidi Horton Collection, an art museum in Vienna. The museum houses works by Pablo Picasso and Pierre-Auguste Renoir as well as Jewish artists such as Marc Chagall, who escaped the Nazis, and Roy Lichtenstein.
The museum’s website includes a brief mention of Helmut Horton’s wealth accumulation under the Nazis, stating that Heidi Horton commissioned a historian to research and write on the creation of Helmut Horton’s wealth and business in the context of “Aryanization”. Was hired to report a scientist.During the ‘Third Reich’.
That report, which was published the previous year, concluded that while Horton profited from the purchase of Jewish-owned businesses, he was not an ardent Nazi and was expelled from the party, and was involved in World War II. He was eventually briefly imprisoned.
“There is no saint and no devil, but Horten who … benefited from the circumstances of the Nazis’ tyranny,” said historian Peter Horace. associated Press, “You cannot say that Horton was part of the resistance against the dictatorship.”
The Heidi Horton Foundation appears to be separate from the foundation bearing her husband’s name. On the Helmut Horten Foundation website, a page containing Horten’s biography does not mention Jews, the Holocaust or the Nazi Party by name, although it does contain a short section referencing Horace’s report. It says that Horton was an “eclectic”, and that the foundation “considers it extremely important to review and understand the history of its founder in the best possible way.”
“This auction is doubly indecent,” Jonathan Arfi, president of CRIF, the umbrella organization for French juries, said in a statement. “The funds that made it possible to acquire these jewels are partly the result of the Aryanization of Jewish property carried out by Nazi Germany, but in addition, this sale will contribute to a foundation whose mission is to ensure the name of a former Nazi. for generation.
More than 400 pieces of Heidi Horten’s jewelry were sold at auction online and in person in Geneva, Switzerland, including jewelry from the brands Bulgari, Van Cleef & Arpels, Cartier and Harry Winston, many with diamonds, pearls and colored gemstones . The pieces are individually estimated to be worth millions of dollars. The final 300 lots from Horton’s collection are set to be sold in November.