New Zealand Jews Slam Sale of Nazi Mementos
Jewish students in the New Zealand coastal city of Dunedin condemned a sale of Nazi memorabilia, calling it a “slap in the face” to the local and national Jewish community.
“The decision to run this auction shows a lack of taste and sensitivity to those who lived through these atrocities and their families,” Ben Isaacs, president of the Dunedin branch of the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, told the Otego Daily Times, a Dunedin newspaper. “This is not something that should have a place in New Zealand. ”
Wednesday’s sale included pre-1945 German military items and memorabilia such as Nazi flags, helmets, belts and pins. Many of the items were brought back by veterans after World War II, Kevin Hayward of Hayward’s Auction House told the newspaper.
“We appreciate we need to be sensitive in how we sell and display it,” Hayward said.
The unnamed vendor reportedly had collected the items over a long period of time.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO