MONTREAL – The objects emit a powerful dark energy and they should be used to remind people, especially young people, about the horror of the Holocaust, a Montreal auctioneer says about what he claims are fossilized human remains from a Nazi death camp.
Patrick Blaizel, owner of the Montreal Auction House on St. Laurent Blvd., put the two objects up for bid on liveauctioneers.com and considered sell them at his store during his monthly live auction on Feb. 26.
Any proceeds will go to a Holocaust memorial, he said.
He has now retracted the sale and issued a statement.
“After listening and talking with the media, I decided to withdraw this article from the auction,” it reads.
“I will get in touch with the Holocaust Museum of Montreal to bring them those remains so they can resit in peace and respect.”
The Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre at first declined to comment on the items.
But have now confirmed that they will have the remains tested and if they are human will ensure they are properly cared for.
Jewish advocacy groups termed the online auction and possible sale as “offensive.”
A Montreal police communications department employee said late Thursday she was referring the matter for a possible police investigation.
“I find them horrible,” Blaizel, 60, and a 26-year veteran of the auction business, said as he handled the striated black and dark blue pieces, which seem to be glazed as if they were baked.
Blaizel has not had the items tested to determine if they are in fact human remains, but he trusts his source.
“If life has handed these pieces to me I believe it is so that I can do something with them,” he said.
“Should I destroy them or show them? I would rather show them so people can remember that happened 70 years ago. People tend to forget.
“If you look at what is going on today in 2012 people are killing themselves left and right, across the globe.”
A man who regularly brings him items to auction off came across the objects three months ago in an estate sale, Blaizel said. The man, whom Blaizel declined to name, was told they were human remains from Treblinka, a Nazi death camp in Poland where it’s estimated nearly 900,000 mainly Jewish people were executed – and their bodies burned – in 1942-43.
The man also brought a broken stone marked with what appear to be Hebrew letters and a bronze statue and a plaster statue, all from the same Montreal estate, Blaizel said.
Blaizel sold the two statues but kept the so-called fossils and the stone.
“I thought about this for three months, trying to figure out what to do. I often have a sense of the objects that arrive here and I’m telling you with these things I feel the energy from them and I can sense the pain and suffering when I touch them. I don’t want to come off like a psychic but I tell you I feel it in my heart.”
Blaizel did not offer the items to a Holocaust museum. “I think they would end up in a drawer somewhere . . . forgotten.”
The pieces have been listed with a starting bid of $10 each.
David Ouellette, a spokesperson in Montreal for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, noted that Nazi soldiers bulldozed Treblinka so that no structures were left standing.
“But whether these pieces are authentic is beside the point,” Ouellette said.
“The mere idea of putting human remains up for auction on the Internet smacks, at best, of poor judgment and at worst, of disregard for human dignity.
“It’s disrespectful. In the Jewish tradition you have to bury human remains and not disturb them.”
Eric Lewis, a professor of philosophy at McGill University and a regular at auctions – including the ones at the Montreal Auction House – doubted the educational mission.
“There is no awareness at all,” Lewis said. “I walk in, I bid on them. Where’s the awareness being raised?”
In 2010, Montreal police seized soap that a vendor in the Plateau Mont Royal claimed was made with the remains of Second World War victims. The claim turned out to be a hoax.
Anita Bromberg, legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada, noted the Criminal Code makes the improper handling of human remains illegal.
Despite Blaizel’s best intentions his items could end up in the kind of hands he does not want them to go to, she added.
“Neo-Nazis look for memorabilia like this.”
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