Auction house in Vernon, B.C. ends sale of Nazi items after concerns raised

After concerns were raised by a local Jewish organization, a Vernon, B.C., auction house has ended the planned sale of some Nazi paraphernalia.

The Okanagan Jewish Community Centre was worried some Nazi items placed for sale online with Dodds Auction house would be purchased by a neo-Nazi.

“My concern is that it will go into the wrong hands and it will incite hatred or violence, actually, in the Okanagan,” said community centre president Steven Finkleman.

“I can imagine, as a worst-case scenario, that there may be some Nazi sympathizers — I think there are some everywhere — and they purchase these objects and use them to incite within them — or perhaps even within a group — hatred or racist issues.”

Finkleman said circulating this type of material publicly is hurtful to those who lived through the Holocaust.

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Two members of Vernon’s Jewish community survived the Holocaust as children, he said.

“One was in France, one was in Warsaw in Poland. I do know that they basically lost most or many of their family members.

“Circulating this material, I think, is an insult to them and the loss of their family under the Nazi regime.”

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Dodds Auction had posted a number of items, including posters, swastika pins, and pictures of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini for sale in an online auction scheduled to end Saturday.

The business said the items came from a Second World War freedom fighter who had fought against the Germans. The items were being liquidated by the collector’s son.

The community centre was hoping the business would cancel the sale — and late Thursday, it did.

The auction house owner told Global News that the business didn’t realize the sale would upset people.

Not wanting to get into conflict or hurt people, the owner said the auction opted to take the items down and give them back to the consigner.

“I would like that owner to donate these historical items to a museum, such as the one in Berlin or any other museum that does document the course of the Holocaust, whether that’s in Israel or the large museum in Washington, D.C.,” Finkleman said. “I think that is an appropriate place for these items to be.”