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By Philip Bradfield

Published 5th Jun 2023, 17:57 BST

Updated 5th Jun 2023, 18:10 BST

The ornate silver-plated pencil is set to go under the hammer in Belfast today as well as a signed portrait of the notorious dictator who led the regime responsible for the Holocaust.The pencil is estimated to sell for between £50,000 and £80,000, while the photograph is expected to sell for between £10,000 and £15,000.The chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, had written to Karl Bennett, managing director of Bloomfield Auctions, asking him to withdraw the items.He questioned whether the auction house would sell possessions belonging to a terrorist who committed an atrocity in Northern Ireland, such as the IRA bombing of La Mon hotel in 1978 on the outskirts of east Belfast which killed 12 people.In 2019 the same Belfast auction house cancelled the planned sale of Nazi memorabilia due to "sensitivities" – and said it would not sell them in the future.

Swastika-emblazoned tableware from Nazi Germany was expected to sell for about £20,000 when bidding opened.

But the items - reportedly produced for Adolf Hitler's 50th birthday - were later withdrawn and Bloomfield Auctions managing director Karl Bennett said they would not sell similar items in the future.

He said in 2019: "In light of the sensitivities surrounding the items, we've taken the decision to withdraw the sale, and they will not be sold by this company in the future."

However, yesterday Mr Bennet had apparently reversed his decision.

“Since 2019 and indeed covid, I've had the opportunity to look across the globe at other auction houses and what they sell," he told the News Letter. "I decided to reintroduce such items as I'm an auction house that sells militaria across all wars and campaigns. Karl Bennett, Bloomfield Auctions.”

However a Jewish woman from North Down who lost most of her wider family to the Nazi Holocaust said anyone buying such material is "sick".

"Just think how much money people are prepared to pay - it's beyond comprehension," Shoshana Appleton told the News Letter. "There must be some very sick people who have more money than anything else."

She lost all her grandparents in the Holocaust. "I never knew them."

Most of her aunts and uncles on both sides were also killed.

Her parents fled from Poland to Israel in the 1930s.

"They came just to help to build a Jewish country so their children wouldn't be called ‘dirty Jews’ like my father was in his village in Poland.”

“So I grew up in Israel without any sort of family, no grandparents. No aunts and uncles. It was difficult."

She came to Northern Ireland in 1963.

She does not believe it should be lawful to sell such items.

"No, certainly not because it makes a mockery of the 6 million who died in the holocaust. It just panders to sick people."

Reporting on the items for sale in Belfast, The European Jews Press quoted Attorney Shlomo Dahan of the European Jewish Association.

He concluded that European countries that have laws against the trade in Nazi items are full of loopholes which are widely exploited – even in Germany.

Nazi memorabilia in Belfast: Bloomfield Auctions will go ahead with auction of 'Hitler's pencil' despite protests from Jewish community