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While my family feud is  going on, an English newspaper, The Mail. reports that eBay has hosted sales of the clothes of concentration camp victims including the striped uniform thought to have belonged to a Polish baker who died in Auschwitz, which was on sale for £11,200. Within hours of being alerted to the item by this newspaper, eBay removed it from sale after conducting an ‘urgent investigation’. Of course the damage is already done.

The eBay sellers proudly posted up pictures of the uniforms the victims were forced to wear, with close ups of the buttons and material posted for potential buyers.

 

Among dozens of sick souvenirs on offer last week was a striped uniform thought to have belonged to a Polish baker

Holocaust survivors, politicians and other outraged citizens reacted to The Mail on Sunday’s findings with revulsion and disbelief.

Among the items we found for sale on eBay last week were:

• A pair of shoes belonging to a death camp victim advertised for £940.
• Yellow Star of David armbands singling out Jews for persecution.
• A Holocaust victim’s battered suitcase priced at £492.
• A £145 ‘concentration camp toothbrush’.

from the Mail: Meanwhile, other sites were offering gas chamber ‘handles’ adorned with swastikas from Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

The most offensive item on eBay was a complete Auschwitz prisoner uniform, including striped shirt, trousers, cap and wooden shoes, with the seller including an armband from Dachau along with the sale.

he item was accompanied by a haunting image of a pile of garments from camp victims.

The seller, Viktor Kempf, a Ukranian now living in Vancouver, Canada, claimed the uniform once belonged to a ‘Wolf Gierson Grundmann’ whose serial number ‘9489’ is stitched to the breast of his shirt. Mr Grundmann’s name can be found on a database of concentration camp victims held by the Yad Vashem centre for Holocaust research in Jerusalem.

It says Mr Grundmann was born in 1912 and lists his occupation as ‘baker’.

Several Star of David armbands were on eBay, with sellers demanding up to £165. Images showed them on Jewish victims

Sellers have been cashing in on the stars that Jewish people were forced to wear

Kempf, who describes himself as historian, said he bought the clothes, which he insists are genuine, from a reputable dealer in America. It wasn’t immediately possible for experts to confirm their authenticity last night.

Kempf said: ‘I understand why people may think profiting is wrong but I sell these items to document [them] and to fund my book projects. If I was a descendant of a victim, I would want to see how my relatives lived. I would want to buy these items to remember them. I run the prisoner numbers on the items through a database to get the names but I personally haven’t had any contact with any of the families. It’s not my place to go searching for these people.

‘I have had criticism in the past and I find it upsetting. I don’t want people to think I’m just doing it for the money. These periods in history are horrific, nobody should ever forget them.’

Last week Kempf was also selling concentration camp ‘trousers’ with an estimate price of between £5,000 and £5,600 and boasted: ‘Last year the uniform from concentration camp sold on eBay for $18,000!! [£11,200]’ The trousers are said to have belonged to a Dawid Bittersfeld, who died at Auschwitz, and were ‘bought many years ago in Krakow, Poland’ from his family.

Experts believe Nazi and Holocaust memorabilia is becoming increasingly accessible as those who lived through the war are dying, leaving artifacts behind. To some they are simply collectible items, but to others the objects glorify the horrors of the Nazi regime.

Toothbrushes apparently used by Auschwitz victims were on sale at £145

A battered case inscribed with the name Samuel and a Star of David, listed at £492

Profiting from pain: Woman’s curlers from the Warsaw Ghetto were listed at £17

Wooden clogs were up for sale as part of a female concentration camp victim¿s uniform

‘I have a yellow badge with the word Jude, which is German for Jew, written on it, which I would never sell as it was given to me by another survivor. To buy or sell this memorabilia is morbid, it sends shivers down my spine.’

TV historian Simon Schama said: ‘This is absolutely beyond belief. Plainly there is no moral atrocity to which eBay will not descend to make a buck. This is an unspeakable act of moral cretinousness.’ Founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar, eBay’s global revenue in 2012 was £9 billion. Its first president was Canadian Jeffrey Skoll, who is from a Jewish family.

The company bans the sale of Nazi paraphernalia, but said in these cases that the items had ‘slipped through the net’.

eBay’s vice-president for UK marketplaces, Tanya Lawler, was unavailable for comment last night, but in a statement the company said: ‘We are very sorry these items have been listed on eBay and we are removing them. We don’t allow listings of this nature, and dedicate thousands of staff to policing our site and use the latest technology to detect items that shouldn’t be for sale.

‘We very much regret that we didn’t live up to our own standards.’

Additional reporting: Ian Gallagher

Who wants to profit from symbols of the camps?

BY GERALD KAUFMAN, MP FOR MANCHESTER, GORTON

For me this is personal. It is impossible for me to know exactly how many members of my family were murdered in the Holocaust, the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews. Some never even got as far as the death camps.

My mother’s mother was shot dead in her bed, in the Polish town of Staszow, during the Second World War.

The German occupation forces decided she was not fit enough to be marched to the railway station, from which that day the Jews of the town were being shipped to the camps.

What goes for me goes for very many other survivor families – and, far more so, for still-living survivors of the camps. I visited one not long ago, in Greater Manchester, to share his memories of his ghastly experiences.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Holocaust was one of the greatest atrocities in all human history.

The filmed news reports of the liberation of those camps, as Allied forces reached them during the final period of the war, in 1945, showed piles of emaciated corpses clad in those obscene camp uniforms, and still living – but only just – survivors of this mass slaughter.

I am appalled that relics of that crime should have been put up for profitable sale.

It was absolutely right that eBay, when it discovered what was going on, should have put a stop to the sales and offered some sort of compensation.

Yet what was going on in the minds of whoever was trying to make financial gain from the visible symbols of the camps?

Those uniforms, those Stars of David that symbolised the religion of the victimised Jews.

While Jews formed the overwhelming majority of prisoners in the camps, there were other, non-Jewish victims, such as gypsies and homosexuals.

In one way, I suppose, we should be grateful to the vendors of the relics.

Whatever their motives, they have reminded current generations of these Nazi bestialities.

We must never forget.
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