Jewels With Nazi Ties Sell at Christie’s Auction for Less Than Estimated Value After Jewish, Diamond Groups Criticize Sale

A Harry Winston emerald and diamond pendent necklace, known as The Great Mogul, that is part of the Heidi Horten jewelry collection being sold by Christie’s. Photo: CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD. 2023

Many items in a jewelry collection auctioned off by Christie’s on Wednesday sold for less than their estimated value after the auction house was urged to not proceed with the sale because the items are linked to a German businessman who bought Jewish companies forcibly sold during the Nazi era.

The 700-piece jewelry collection belongs to the late Austrian billionaire and philanthropist Heidi Horten whose first husband, the late Helmut Horten, built his retail empire in the 1930s by purchasing Jewish businesses “sold under duress” during the Nazi occupation of Germany, Christie’s said. When Helmut died, he left “a significant inheritance to Mrs. Horten, the source of which is a matter of public record,” the auction house added.

Also a historic 90.36 carat Briolette of India diamond necklace by Harry Winston sold for 6.3 million francs while pre-sale, Christie’s thought it would sell for 9 million to 14 million francs. Another Harry Winston item — a sapphire, cultured pearl and diamond necklace — was estimated to sell for 1.35 million to 1.8 million francs and instead sold for a little over 352,000 francs. Other items that sold well below their pre-sale estimated value include diamond earrings, a diamond necklace and diamond ring, all three from Bulgari, and a Van Cleef & Arpels sapphire and diamond ring.

Christie’s said the in-person auction on Wednesday in Geneva garnered in total $156 million, the Associated Press reported. A second in-person auction will take place on Friday with the remaining items from Heidi’s collection.

All proceeds from Heidi’s estate will benefit The Heidi Horten Foundation, which supports medical research, child welfare and a museum in Vienna that bears her name. Christie’s said that it will also make a “significant contribution” from the sale’s final proceeds to Jewish organizations to support Holocaust research and education, but Jewish advocacy groups criticized the auction house for even offering up the jewelry collection.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center demanded that Christie’s cancel the auction before it even started, saying it in a letter to the latter’s CEO that Helmut’s fortune was the “sum of profits from Nazi ‘aryanization’ of Jewish department stores” in Nazi Germany. The Jewish group pointed out that Helmut “profited from ‘aryanization laws’ and used it to his advantage to buy out businesses by Jews desperate to flee Nazi Germany for a fraction of their worth. In 1937, he entering the Nazi party and while expanding his business in the Netherlands, he bought a business owned by Jews who were deported to Nazi concentration camps.

“Don’t reward those whose families may have gained riches from desperate Jews targeted and threatened by the Nazis,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, SWC’s associate dean and director of global social action.

David Schaecter, president of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA, told the AP that it “unquestionably trivializes the Holocaust to justify using money brutally extracted from the Jewish people under barbaric conditions — conditions people today barely understand — in order to support the profiteer’s chosen ‘charitable purposes.’”

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