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GENEVA (AP) — Christie’s is auctioning off a staggering 700 pieces of jewelry from the collection of the late Austrian heiress Heidi Horten, whose German husband built a retail empire starting in the 1930s — in part from Department stores and other assets sold by desperate Jews as they fled Nazi Germany.
Sales of “one of the greatest jewelry collections ever created” are expected to fetch about $150 million, the auction house said. Proceeds will benefit her Vienna Art Museum, child welfare and medical research. As criticism of the auction mounts, Christie’s said it plans to donate a portion of the sale’s profits to Holocaust education.
The sale has already started online but will also take place in two parts at a luxury Geneva hotel on Wednesday and Friday. Heidi Horten bought a record-setting ruby ring in 2015 for $30 million. A dazzling diamond necklace can fetch $15 million or more. The auction house said more Bulgari jewels were on display than at any previous sale.
But the auction has been fraught with controversy: The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based Jewish rights group, “asked” Christie’s to withdraw the sale, insisting the multibillion-dollar fortune Horten’s husband, Helmut Horten, had amassed is “Total Profits from the Nazi ‘Aryanization’ of Jewish Department Stores Under Nazi Germany”.
The story of Helmut Horten is complex, says historian Peter Hoeres of the University of Würzburg in Germany. He was commissioned by Heidi Horten to write an extensive study of her husband’s business empire.
The report lays out a gradual, eventually overbearing squeeze on Jewish-owned businesses. Tens of thousands of Jewish-owned retail outlets were “Aryanized”—values depressed by boycotts, propaganda attacks, and other pressures from authorities in the 1930s. Many Jews were not compensated; some received “hidden payments,” while most buyers — likely like Horton — “profited” from the persecution measures.
Earlier this month, the Simon Wiesenthal Center called for the withdrawal of the auction – which has now been launched online – saying Horton helped build his business by buying the department store where he worked when Adolf Hitler came to power at a “low price”. Reich 1933 from its Jewish owners Strauss and Lauter “who fled to America”
Beginning in 1933, the Strauss and Lauter families, owners of the Alsberg department store in Duisburg, reportedly faced boycott calls and other harassment. Their customers are also intimidated.
Horton was not an “ideological” man, but he was not opposed to Nazi laws either, Jerez said. Testimony indicated that Helmut Horten “tried to help” some Jews, and that he sometimes even “laughed” at Nazi leaders, but he also fired some Jewish employees to comply with Nazi racial laws. He joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and was expelled seven years later – even briefly arrested.
“We have 27 archives in Europe, we read thousands of pages of material, and I think we finally[discovered]…there are no saints and no devils, but there is Horten… who benefited from in the context of the Nazi tyranny,” Jerez said in an interview. “You can’t say Horten was part of a revolt against the dictatorship.”
Hoeres’ research shows that Horton’s personal wealth swelled during the war years. It extracts an English-language document – attributed to postwar British authorities’ “German Control Council” – that calls Horten “the worst kind of villain” and “a thoroughly depraved individual” who should be brought to justice Law.
[1945年纳粹战败后，霍顿被英国人拘禁了两年，失去了很多财产。但在1948年获释后，他利用贷款创建了后来成为德国第四大百货连锁店的公司——部分依赖纳粹时期建立的品牌名称。
与佳士得没有关系的赫雷斯说，这位商人积累的财富比他在战前或战争期间积累的财富要多得多。
“先生。 霍顿在第二次世界大战期间的商业活动有据可查，这是佳士得在推出该系列时仔细考虑的因素，”佳士得日内瓦珠宝部门负责人 Max Fawcett 说。 “我们接受这个系列的原因是最终销售收入的 100% 将用于慈善事业。”
Fawcett 补充说：“我们无法抹去历史——但希望这次出售所得的钱能在未来做好事。”
这些珠宝不是从犹太人那里购买的，但购买它的富人却起源于纳粹时代。 佳士得表示，这些珠宝都是从 1970 年代初开始购买的——战争结束后超过四分之一个世纪——一直到去年海蒂·霍滕 (Heidi Horten) 去世。 她的丈夫于 1987 年去世。佳士得指出，他“购买了在胁迫下出售的犹太企业”。
佳士得的拍卖目录完全集中在霍顿夫人身上：在一张照片中，她微笑着抱着一只小黑猩猩。 最初，它没有提及她的丈夫或他的财富来源。
拍卖会上最引人注目的作品——包括蓝宝石、祖母绿、珍珠、钻石等等——是 90 克拉的“Briolette of India”钻石，这条项链的中心装饰着较小的钻石，有预估价1000 万至 1500 万美元。 近 26 克拉的“日出红宝石”也受到重创：八年前海蒂·霍顿 (Heidi Horten) 在日内瓦拍卖会上以创纪录的 3,000 万美元买下。
“霍顿用来建造这个藏品的数十亿美元也是纳粹对犹太百货商店进行‘雅利安化’的利润总和，”该中心的国际关系总监西蒙·塞缪尔斯 (Shimon Samuels) 在给佳士得首席执行官纪尧姆·塞鲁蒂 (Guillaume Cerutti) 的信中写道。
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