The U.S. Internal Revenue Service announced today that it has called off a public auction of anti-Semitic material and property of the American Nazi Party.
The IRS action indefinitely deferring the auction, which had been scheduled for the week of December 27, followed Congressional criticism and also the application by Nazi leader George Rockwell for an injunction to block the IRS sale. Argument on the injunction was scheduled today to be heard by federal court in Alexandria, Va., on December 29 before Judge Oren Lewis.
The Nazi property was seized in an IRS raid on December 3 for non-payment of taxes. Among the confiscated goods are swastikas, armbands, weapons, a large picture of Adolf Hitler, addressograph nameplates of Nazi sympathizers, and such other Nazi paraphernalia as Rockwell had assembled over a period of years. An auction was announced, according to IRS procedure, to recover the sums owed the Government.
Sen. Clifford P. Case, New Jersey Republican, had protested to IRS commissioner Sheldon Cohen that public sale of swastika armbands and similar Nazi material would put the Federal Government “in the position of purveying for profit the same stock-in-trade as the American Nazi Party.”
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