This article is part of our morning briefing. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox each weekday. Under pressure, Christie’s cancels jewelry sale from estate built on Jewish persecution. In a stunning conclusion to a story the Forward has followed for months, Christie’s auction house canceled the auction of part of a jewelry collection owned by a billionaire who profited from the Holocaust. Emphasis on “part of” — the first installment of the auction, which sold 98% of Heidi Horten’s collection for a record-breaking $202 million, went ahead despite pressure from Jewish groups.
“Purchased Jewish businesses sold under duress”: Horten’s husband, Helmut, built his fortune by buying up Jewish department stores in Germany after the Nazi party banned Jews from owning businesses. But initial Christie’s materials advertising the May sale of his widow Heidi’s massive store of jewelry papered over the source of their wealth. The auctioneers only added one sentence about Helmut Horten’s WWII-era business practices after coming under intense pressure from Jewish groups. “Justify their plunder”: After the May sale, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art canceled a conference it had planned to host with Christie’s about the deeply complex work of restituting Nazi-looted art. (Yes, really.) The Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA asked the museum to back out of the event because it would provide “a platform within the Jewish State for Holocaust profiteers to justify their plunder.” “We will continue to reflect”: “The sale of the Heidi Horten jewelry collection has provoked intense scrutiny, and the reaction to it has deeply affected us and many others, and we will continue to reflect on it,” Anthea Peers, president of Christie’s Europe, Middle East and Africa division, told Artnet News in announcing the cancellation of another sale of Horten’s jewels planned for the fall. |
Tal and Edo hope to ensure that kids of all ages get a chance to speak at Israel’s protests. (Courtesy of Tal and Edo) |
‘We don’t have another country’: Two teenage protest leaders question Israel’s future. Tal, 18, and Edo, 19, lead a group of teenage protesters involved in demonstrations against Israel’s government in a mid-size town halfway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. Our reporter Mira Fox sat down with the duo in August, during a trip to report on the protests that have seized the country in response to a planned judicial overhaul. “I will fight so my father will never need to cry again,” Edo told Mira, citing his parents’ anguish over the plans. “I was so angry that they made my father cry.” Read the story ➤ A hip LA wine bar hosted an Israeli chef — and Instagram lost its mind. “What will they be serving? Colonized hummus and apartheid falafel?” was one of the hundreds of nasty comments. The fracas highlighted a rift over Israel’s place within food culture, our senior contributing editor Rob Eshman writes, demonstrating a broader misunderstanding of the ways in which culinary traditions develop. “This is food, food travels, we get influences from each other, we inspire each other,” said Ofir Horesh, the chef at the center of the fray. Read the story ➤ |
WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY |
The Catholic Church is set to beatify an entire family killed by the Nazis for hiding Jews. (Franco Origlia/Getty Images) |
? A family executed by the Nazis for hiding Jews will be beatified by the Catholic Church in September. The family hid eight Jews, including a 3-year-old child, in their home in southeastern Poland. When the Nazis murdered Józef and Wiktoria Ulma and their seven children, Wiktoria was pregnant. It’s believed that the church has never before beatified a whole family together — or an unborn child. (Catholic News Agency) ? Finland took the first step toward criminalizing Holocaust denial after a top minister resigned over revelations that he had joked about Nazi symbols at a far-right political event. “There is no room for racism in Finland,” Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said. (JTA) ? Cairo’s Ben Ezra Synagogue, famous for having housed the Cairo Geniza, was reopened following a significant restoration. The Geniza is a collection of 400,000 Hebrew manuscript fragments. The synagogue is believed to date to 882 C.E., making it one of the oldest synagogues in Egypt. (Times of Israel) ?? The United Kingdom appointed a Jewish defense minister for the first time in three decades. Grant Shapps, 54, is related to a founding member of punk group The Clash. (JTA) ?? An antisemitism scandal surrounding a regional German politician deepened after former classmates said he had performed Nazi salutes and pretended to be Hitler. Hubert Aiwanger, deputy governor of the state of Bavaria, first came under scrutiny last week over claims that he had authored an antisemitic flyer while in high school. (Haaretz) ? Israel purchased a new ambassadorial residence in Washington, D.C., for $10 million. Israel has rented residences for its ambassadors since 2013, when its former official residence was deemed unlivable. (Jewish Insider) Shiva call ➤ David Rowland, a lawyer who fought for the restitution of Nazi-looted art, died at 67. Frank Bright, one of the U.K.’s last Jewish Holocaust survivors, died at 94.
What else we’re reading ➤ “Reclaiming the Jewish heritage that was taken from my grandfather” … A Serbian city’s Jewish community, decimated by the Holocaust, has struggled on — until now … Sure, you know about Jewish camp, but what about Jewish surf camp? |
Theodore Bikel in costume in a 1960 production of The Dybbuk directed by Sidney Lumet. (Linda Palmer/Pictorial Parade/Archive Photos/Getty Images) |
On this day in history (1921): S. Ansky’s play The Dybbuk, about a young bride possessed by the spirit, or dybbuk, of her dead lover, had its American premiere in New York. The classic of Yiddish theater “inspired many generations of audiences, as well as creative artists (George Gershwin, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein were among the composers moved by the story),” Benjamin Ivry wrote for the Forward in 2009. |
Of all the secular holidays in the year, Labor Day is the most Jewish — at least, so said Rabbi Ron Stern of the Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles in a 2022 sermon. — Thanks to Benyamin Cohen, Ella Goldblum and Beth Harpaz for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at [email protected]. |
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