A Tel Aviv shop owner has canceled plans to auction off Holocaust memorabilia – – including a bar of soap said to have been made from Jewish remains — after news of the auction set off a wave of disgust in the country.
Menashe Meridack, owner of the Zodiac Stamp Shop, said Tuesday that he had canceled the planned auction in the wake of the public outcry. He also said he had returned the soap to its original owner, the son of a former inmate of the Buchenwald death camp.
“I run two auctions a year, and always have some things from the Holocaust on sale,” he said. “I don’t buy these things. People bring me stuff, like yellow patches, badges, Nazi documents, and I put them up for sale.
“The soap entered the catalog by mistake. I was not aware of the sensitivity that surrounded the soap. When I heard it reported on the news, I returned the soap and all other Holocaust items to their owners,” said Meridack.
The auction catalogue of the Zodiac Stamp Shop, which specializes mainly in international postage stamps, was stocked with Holocaust memorabilia, including the yellow Stars of David the Nazis forced Jews to wear, Nazi deportation orders and death certificates stamped with swastikas. The soap had a starting price of $300.
Meridack had originally planned to hold the auction April 25 — two days before Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Meridack said the person who had sold him the soap, Moshe Yahalom, had offered the item for auction because he had fallen on hard times.
Yahalom, appearing on Israel Television, said he was destitute, having just been released from prison after serving a jail sentence for rape and indecent acts.
According to Yahalom, the charges against him were trumped up, and he had just wanted the money from the sale of the soap to enable him to leave the country.
News of the auction elicited an outcry of protest from Holocaust survivors, politicians and religious leaders, including Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a survivor of Buchenwald.
The controversial bar of soap has been pictured on the front pages of Israeli newspapers and was featured on television and radio reports.
Tel Aviv Mayor Roni Milo vowed to stop the auction, by force if necessary.
Likud Knesset member Dov Shilansky, himself a Holocaust survivor, strongly criticized Yahalom’s decision to sell off what his father had given him.
“How can he live with himself, selling soap made from his ancestors?” Shilansky told Israel Radio. “His father kept it as a reminder, so her would never forget.”
Shilansky said he would discuss in the Knesset the idea of enacting legislation to prevent the sale of Holocaust memorabilia in Israel.
But there are those who maintain that despite the many atrocities the Nazis did commit, they did not make soap from Jewish remains.
This was “a poor-quality soap issued to German troops,” Yehuda Bauer, a respected Holocaust historian, told Israel Radio.
“There were many instances in which the Nazis told their victims, `We will turn you into soap,’ until the Jews began to believe it. But it is a myth,” Bauer said.
Avner Shalev, chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, concurred.
“There is no supporting evidence that the Nazis ever made soap of human fat,” Shalev said in an interview. “They threatened Jews that they would make soap of them, but there is no evidence that they ever did.”
Shalev said he was “personally shocked” by the planned auction.
“These items are part of our Jewish fate and have become symbols. How could anyone trade in them? We ask of people who have such items in their homes to donate them to Yad Vashem if they don’t want to keep them,” said Shalev.
According to Shalev, Yad Vashem is about to embark on project “Rescue Collection” in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Foundation.
The project will include the collection of personal items relating to the Holocaust, the completion of lists of those who died in the Holocaust and the recording of survivors’ testimonies on video.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
