The Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif) on Tuesday called on Christie's to suspend the auction of the jewels of Austrian billionaire Heidi Horten, deeming it "indecent" because of her husband's ties to the Nazis.
In May, hundreds of jewels of Heidi Horten, who died in 2022, are offered for sale, in Geneva and online, by Christie's, an "extraordinary" collection according to the auction house, valued between 150 and 200 million dollars.
'Doubly indecent'
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This auction is doubly indecent: not only are the funds that made it possible to acquire these jewels partly from the Aryanization of Jewish property carried out by Nazi Germany, but, in addition, this sale must abound a foundation whose mission is to ensure the posterity of the surname of a former Nazi!" Yonathan Arfi, in a statement.
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The origin of Heidi Horten's husband's fortune has drawn criticism. Helmut Horten - who died in 1987 - who built his fortune in Germany under the Nazi Party of which he was a member for a time, was accused of having profited from the "Aryanization" of Jewish property (dispossession measures aimed at transferring the ownership of companies owned by people of Jewish origin).
'A work of memory'
Proceeds from the auction are to go to the Heidi Horten Foundation, established in 2021 to support the eponymous collection, as well as medical research, child protection and other philanthropic activities. Crif deplores that this foundation refuses "to carry out any work around the memory of the Holocaust" and that Christie's "associates its name with the Horten family". It asks Christie's to "suspend this auction as long as the Horten Foundation does not engage in a work of authentic and complete memory".
The auction house announced it would give "a significant contribution" of commissions related to the sale to "an organization that advances Holocaust research and education." But for Crif, this "does not change anything (...) at the troubled origin of the fortune of the Horten family". In recent days, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which specializes in tracking former Nazis, and the American Jewish Committee have also called on Christie's to suspend the sale.