The Israeli Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily halted an auction on the Internet of a body ink kit allegedly used by members of the SS at Auschwitz, after the auctioneer said he was now focusing his attention on Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The auction was scheduled to take place on March 23, but the Supreme Court ruled that the auction is no longer scheduled to take place because the auctioneer, Ben Elgar of Trademark England, had changed his course of action. He will now focus on auctioning off secondhand items from the site of the former Nazi death camp.
“Since starting to discuss the auction with the concerned parties in the case, the main interests of the claimants have come to my attention,” Elgar said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“As a consequence, I have changed my plan and there is now no plan of proceeding with the auction,” he said.
The auction, which begins at noon, will now include only artifacts from the camp, and organizers have organized exhibitions on the camp, as well as educational seminars for students.
Adi Rukavina, who manages and oversees Ben Elgar’s cataloging department, said that the auction, which aims to raise €80,000 to €100,000 for a Polish Holocaust museum, will still proceed in other markets, including Belgium, England, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, and Germany.
“The auction will have to operate just as it does today, using Ben Elgar’s style. This means the auction will be held by the authorized auctioneer from whom the catalogue is published and the auction will proceed under all rules in terms of delivery, timing and security,” Rukavina said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Rukavina told the newspaper that no part of the auction — which takes place during the Hebrew month of Tevet, which starts March 10 — would include any items from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, its associated facilities, or its former inmates.
Rukavina also told the Jerusalem Post that, based on the auction’s initial publicity, he anticipated more than 200 people to attend the auction.