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Jewelry with Nazi ties fetches record prices at Christie’s auction amid controversy
(JTA) — A blockbuster jewelry auction at Christie’s is drawing criticism because of the gems’ ties to a Nazi.
The pieces sold Monday belonged to the late Heidi Horten, an Austrian art collector whose husband, Helmut Horten, was a Nazi Party member. The items fetched a total of $202 million, making the auction the largest jewelry sale in history.
Some Jewish groups had urged Christie’s to halt the sale, citing Helmut Horten’s record during the Nazi era, when he amassed a fortune after buying businesses whose Jewish owners sold them under duress, often at steeply discounted prices. Horten used that wealth to propel his company, which ultimately was responsible for introducing American-style supermarkets in Germany.
Heidi Horten was born in 1941 and was more than 30 years younger than her husband. When he died in 1987, she inherited nearly $1 billion, according to The New York Times. Heidi Horten died last year at age 81.
Associations representing Jews and Holocaust survivors criticized the auction because of the origin of the wealth that paid for the jewelry. David Schaecter, president of Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation USA, said the auction continues “a disgraceful pattern of whitewashing Holocaust profiteers,” according to the Times.
“Christie’s must suspend this sale until full research [into the] link to Nazi era acquisitions [is] completed,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said in a statement earlier this month urging Christie’s to halt the auction. “Don’t reward those whose families may have gained riches from desperate Jews targeted and threatened by the Nazis.”
Christie’s also drew fire for not initially including any mention of the Jewish businesses in its marketing materials for the auction. Its website now includes a brief note stating that the provenance of Horten’s wealth is “a matter of public record. The business practices of Mr. Horten during the Nazi era, when he purchased Jewish businesses sold under duress, are well documented.”
The auction house has committed to donating a portion of its commission to organizations that contribute to Holocaust research and education. It did not specify which organizations would receive the funds, saying only in a statement that it would be up to those organizations to “communicate about these donations.”
Proceeds from the sale of the jewels will be donated to the Heidi Horten Foundation, which supports children’s welfare and medical research, in addition to funding the Heidi Horten Collection, an art museum in Vienna. The museum boasts works by Pablo Picasso and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, as well as Jewish artists such as Marc Chagall, who escaped the Nazis, and Roy Lichtenstein.
The museum’s website includes a brief mention of Helmut Horten’s wealth accumulation under the Nazis, stating that Heidi Horten hired a historian to research and write “a scientific report on Helmut Horten’s build-up of assets and business in the context of ‘Aryanization’ during the ‘Third Reich.’”
That report, which was published last year, concluded that while Horten benefited from his purchase of Jewish-owned businesses, he was not an enthusiastic Nazi and was expelled from the party, and briefly imprisoned, near the end of World War II.
“There is not a saint and not a devil, but there is Horten who … benefited from the circumstances of the tyranny of the Nazis,” the historian, Peter Hoeres, told the Associated Press. “You can’t say Horten was part of the resistance against the dictatorship.”
The Heidi Horten Foundation appears to be separate from a foundation bearing the name of her husband. On the website of the Helmut Horten Foundation, a page with a biography of Horten does not mention Jews, the Holocaust or the Nazi Party by name, though it does have a short section referencing Hoeres’ report. It says Horten was a “liberal,” and that the foundation “considers it extremely important to review and understand its founder’s history in the best possible way.”
“This auction is doubly indecent,” Yonathan Arfi, chairman of CRIF, the umbrella organization for French Jewry, said in a statement. “The funds that made it possible to acquire these jewels are partly the result of the Aryanization of Jewish property carried out by Nazi Germany, but in addition, this sale will contribute to a foundation whose mission it is to ensure the name of a former Nazi for posterity.”
More than 400 pieces of Heidi Horten’s jewelry were sold in the auction, both online and in person in Geneva, Switzerland, including jewels from brands Bulgari, Van Cleef and Arpels, Cartier, and Harry Winston, with many diamond, pearl, and colored gemstone pieces individually estimated to be worth millions of dollars. The last 300 lots from Horten’s collection are scheduled to be sold in November.
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The post Jewelry with Nazi ties fetches record prices at Christie’s auction amid controversy appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen
(JTA) — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has called on Israel to rein in its attacks on Iranian oil infrastructure, marking a rare note of caution from a Republican lawmaker who has said he helped push the United States to join Israel in waging war against Iran.
In a post on X on Sunday, Graham praised Israel for its role in the war before adding that “there will be a day soon that the Iranian people will be in charge of their own fate, not the murderous ayatollah’s regime.”
“In that regard, please be cautious about what targets you select,” continued Graham. “Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses. The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor.”
Graham’s post linked to an Axios article that reported that the United States was alarmed by Israeli strikes over the weekend that targeted 30 Iranian fuel depots. On Monday, U.S. gas prices rose to their highest levels since 2024.
The warning from Graham, an ally of President Donald Trump and staunch supporter of Israel, comes days after the Republican hawk told the Wall Street Journal that he had played a key role in urging Trump to strike Iran.
Prior to the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, Graham made several trips to Israel where he met with members of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whom he said he coached on how to lobby Trump to strike Iran.
“They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” Graham told the newspaper.
On Monday, Graham also directed his criticism at Saudi Arabia’s decision to stay on the sidelines of the campaign against Iran.
“It is my understanding the Kingdom refuses to use their capable military as a part of an effort to end the barbaric and terrorist Iranian regime who has terrorized the region and killed 7 Americans,” wrote Graham in a post on X Monday. “Question – why should America do a defense agreement with a country like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that is unwilling to join a fight of mutual interest?”
The post Lindsey Graham urges Israel not to strike Iranian oil depots even as he says he helped make war happen appeared first on The Forward.
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Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism
(JTA) — Belgian officials are investigating an explosion in front of a synagogue in Liège early Monday as a possible act of terrorism.
The explosion, which took place at 4 a.m., damaged the door of the historic neo-Romanesque synagogue and blew out the windows of multiple buildings across the street. No injuries were reported.
A range of Belgian politicians, including the prime minister and the mayor of Liège, characterized the explosion as act of antisemitism.
“Antisemitism is an attack on our values and our society, and we must fight it unequivocally,” Prime Minister Bart de Wever said in a statement. “We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community in Liege and across the country.”
The explosion comes amid a surge of concern about possible attacks by agents associated with the Iranian regime, against which the United States and Israel launched a war last week. Iran has a long record of supporting attacks on Jewish targets abroad, including two bombings in the 1990s in Argentina that killed more than 100 people at the Israeli embassy and a Jewish community center. Now, with Iran being pummeled at home, watchdogs are warning that it might lash out through its Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, responsible for attacks abroad.
Azerbaijan said Friday that it had foiled multiple terror attacks planned by Iranian agents on Jewish sites. In London, four men were arrested last week for allegedly spying on the Jewish community for Iran, with the intent of planning attacks against the community. And a string of shootings at synagogues in Toronto has ignited concern in Canada, too.
Iranian agents have taken aim at non-Jewish targets, too. On Friday, a Pakistani man who prosecutors said had been directed by Iran’s IRGC was convicted of plotting to assassinate President Donald Trump.
The attack in Liège, in the primarily French-speaking Wallonia province, comes amid a range of recent developments that have unsettled Belgian Jews, who number approximately 30,000. They include antisemitic carnival caricatures in the city of Aalst; a ban on ritual slaughter preventing the local production of kosher meat; and an ongoing row between U.S. and Belgian officials over Jewish circumcision practices. The attack also follows a 2014 shooting in which a gunman associated with the Islamic State, a rival to Iran’s Islamic Republic, shot four people to death at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
A spokesperson for the Liège police described the effects to the area as “only material damage” to the 1899 building. Rabbi Joshua Nejman told local media that he was hoping that security footage would reveal the perpetrator.
“I’m going to try to calm my heart, because it is beating faster and faster this morning,” said Nejman, who said he had been at the synagogue for 25 years.
“Liege is home to a very small but vibrant Jewish community where I personally grew up,” Eitan Bergman, vice president of the Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organisations in Belgium, told Reuters. “Today, the feelings among our community members are a mixture of sadness, worry and profound shock.”
Liege’s mayor, Willy Demeyer, praised the synagogue community to RBTF, Belgium’s French-language national broadcaster. He added, “We cannot allow foreign conflicts to be imported into our city.”
The post Belgian officials investigating synagogue explosion as possible act of terrorism appeared first on The Forward.
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The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2025
In honor of The Algemeiner‘s 12th annual gala, we are proud to present our “J100” list — 100 individuals who have positively influenced Jewish life over the past year.