BERLIN (AP) — Poland's foreign minister said Sunday that an “offensive” auction of Holocaust artifacts has been canceled in Germany, relaying information from his German counterpart, following complaints from Holocaust survivors.
Radoslaw Sikorski made the comments on the X platform, saying he and German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul “agreed that such a scandal must be prevented.” The top Polish diplomat thanked Wadephul for the information that the auction was canceled.
Earlier, a Holocaust survivors group called on the German auction house Felzmann to cancel Monday's sale of hundreds of Holocaust artifacts, including letters written by prisoners and other documents that identify many people by name.
A listing of information about the auction on the Auktionhaus Felzmann website on Sunday morning was no longer on the site by mid-afternoon. The house did not immediately respond to calls, an email and a text message on Sunday.
The collection of over 600 lots at auction in western Neuss, near Düsseldorf, included letters written by prisoners from German concentration camps to loved ones at home, Gestapo index cards and other perpetrator documents, the German news agency dpa reported. The auction was titled “The System of Terror.”
“For victims of Nazi persecution and Holocaust survivors, this auction is a cynical and shameless undertaking that leaves them outraged and speechless," Christoph Heubner, an executive vice president of The International Auschwitz Committee, a Berlin-based group of survivors, said in a statement on Saturday.
“Their history and the suffering of all those persecuted and murdered by the Nazis is being exploited for commercial gain,” he added. The committee said the names of individuals were identifiable in many of the documents.
Heubner said such documents of persecution and the Holocaust “belong to the families of the victims. They should be displayed in museums or memorial exhibitions and not degraded to mere commodities.”
"We urge those responsible at the Felzmann auction house to show some basic decency and cancel the auction,” he added.
FILE - The star of David at the Jewish memorial at the Dachau concentration camp memorial site where more than 43,000 people were murdered and over 200,000 were imprisoned during the Nazi terror reign from 1933-1945 in Dachau, Germany, April 24, 2025, a few days before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump issued a flurry of pardons in recent days, including for the father of a large donor to his super PAC, a former governor of Puerto Rico and a woman whose sentence he commuted during his first term but who ended up back in prison for a different scheme.
Trump commuted the sentence of Adriana Camberos just before his first stint in the White House ended in 2021. That followed her being convicted as part of an effort to divert 5-Hour Energy drink bottles acquired for resale in Mexico and instead keep them in the U.S. Prosecutors said she and several co-conspirators attached counterfeit labels and filled the bottles with a phony liquid before selling them.
In 2024, she and her brother, Andres, were convicted in a separate case, this one involving lying to manufacturers to sell wholesale groceries and additional items at big discounts after pledging that they were meant for sale in Mexico or to prisoners or rehabilitation facilities. The siblings sold the products at higher prices to U.S. distributors, prosecutors said.
The Camberoses were among 13 pardons Trump issued Thursday, along with eight commutations. An additional pardon was announced Friday for Terren Peizer, a resident of Puerto Rico and California who headed the Miami-based health care company Ontrak.
Peizer had been convicted and sentenced to 42 months in prison, and fined $5.25 million, for engaging in an insider trading scheme to avoid losses exceeding $12.5 million, according to the Justice Department.
The president has issued a number of clemencies during the first year of his second term, many targeted at criminal cases once touted by federal prosecutors. They’ve come amid a continuing Trump administration effort to erode public integrity guardrails — including the firing of the Justice Department’s pardon attorney.
Also pardoned this week was former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez, who had pleaded guilty last August to a campaign finance violation in a federal case that authorities say also involved a former FBI agent and a Venezuelan banker. Her sentencing had been set for later this month.
Federal prosecutors had been seeking one year behind bars, something Vázquez’s attorneys opposed as they accused prosecutors of violating a guilty plea deal reached last year that saw previous charges including bribery and fraud dropped.
They had noted that Vázquez had agreed to plead guilty to accepting a promise of a campaign contribution that was never received.
Also involved in the case was banker Julio Herrera Velutini, whose daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to Trump's MAGA Inc. super PAC in 2024, and gave the group an additional $1 million last summer. The case's third defendant was former FBI agent Mark Rossini, who was also pardoned by the president.
The recent wave of clemencies joins previous Trump pardons of Democratic former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Republican ex-Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, whose promising political career was upended by a corruption scandal and two federal prison stints.
Trump also pardoned former U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm, a New York Republican who resigned from Congress after a tax fraud conviction and made headlines for threatening to throw a reporter off a Capitol balcony over a question he didn’t like. Reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of cheating banks and evading taxes, also got Trump pardons.
The president also pardoned Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar in a bribery and conspiracy case. He later expressed regret and frustration for having done so, however, when Cuellar announced he was seeking reelection without switching parties to become a Republican.
President Donald Trump points after arriving at Palm Beach International Airport on Air Force One, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
