"A collection of surgical equipment that belonged to a Nazi concentration camp commandant is being put up for auction this week. The wooden box of tools belonged to Anton Burger, a major in the SS who worked at the Theresienstadt concentration camp between July 1943 and February 1944, where 140,000 Jews were held - and 33,000 of them died. News of the sale has provoked outrage in the Jewish community. Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies, the main representative body of British Jews, said that 'to seek to profit from such ghoulish objects is deeply troubling'. Other Jewish groups, including the Anne Frank Trust and Holocaust Educational Trust, said that the collection should be placed in an educational context, such as a museum. Theresienstadt was used as a propaganda tool during the Second World War, with the Germans trying to fool the world that it was a 'paradise camp'." Sinister set of surgeon's tools that belonged to Nazi war criminal go under the hammer | Mail Online
I couldn't agree more with the commentators cited in the article. The chest belongs into a musueum and the fascination people have towards this, and similar artefacts, is perverted!
Theresienstadt has a museum in place. The logical place for the instruments. The camp is in very good condition and open to the public. A compound, almost village, for the guards is also intact and many photographs and history articles on display. It was a so called "Model" camp, to show the Red Cross that things were not as bad as Allies said. That being said it did deteriorate into a worst type of place between RC visits. It still remained a holding camp where prisoners were sent to extermination camps. There are about 10,000 graves there, an excution wall and if one explores enough a cremetorium . While looking for it I came across the remains of a Soviet tank farm, long empty. from the cold war era. I climded the fence and examined two T-34 85's and if my memory is correct a SU-85 or 100 that were left . Part of the museum's holdings, to me the most moving part, has been moved to the older Jewish Synagogue in Prague, itself worth a visit. it is a collection of children's photos and names that were taught art by a young Jewish woman, herself trained at the Bauhaus. it shows young boys or girls with poems and stories they wrote along with art they created. After their name it gives their birthday and the day they were killed, in one of the extermination camps. Given the nature of Theresienstadt it does not seem likely that medical experiments were done there but Major Burger could have .
FWIW, I looked at that surgical set and it appears to be an amputation set to me. I agree that the museum seems like the appropriate setting for this to reside.
Here's the latest- the set has been withdrawn- "A Nazi surgical equipment set owned by an SS commandant and war criminal has been withdrawn from a sale today after phone and e-mail threats. The wooden box of tools belonged to Anton Burger, a major in the SS who worked at the Theresienstadt concentration camp between July 1943 and February 1944, where 140,000 Jews were held - and 33,000 of them died. The set had been due to go under the hammer at Villa Hall Auctions in Bude, Cornwall, tomorrow.The police said the messages prompted safety concerns for staff and there will be a police presence at the auction even though the controversial lot has been withdrawn. The set contains instruments that would have been used in amputations including a saw and scalpels." Nazi surgical set withdrawn from auction after organisers reveal 'really unpleasant' threats from family of people who died in the war | Mail Online
