A Melbourne auction house has pulled a number of "degenerate and indecent" Nazi items from sale following complaints.
Until Friday, Abbeys Auctions in Burwood was listing a variety of Third Reich-era memorabilia in one of its online catalogues.
One lot, with a starting bid of $300 included an Adolf Hitler "stationary envelope" along with a "Hermann Goering letterhead" and a "collection of photographs and postcards of Adolf Hitler".
The items are now listed as "withdrawn". Source: Abbeys Auctions
Other lots featured ID cards for SS officers and letters from Karl-Otto Koch, a commandant of Nazi concentration camps, and Karl Donitz, who briefly succeeded Hitler as the German head of state in 1945.
On Friday, director of Abbeys Auctions Hugh Farrelly told SBS News the lots were no longer for sale.
"We got some feedback from our customers that it was not appropriate so we took them out," Mr Farrelly said.
"I would never push back, it would be a foolish individual to push back on such a subject."
It is legal to sell Nazi memorabilia in Australia and a number of military antique stores stock such items. However, several European countries, including Germany, ban the sale of such memorabilia.
The move was welcomed by the Jewish advocacy group, the Anti-Defamation Commission.
"This is a triumph for the memory of the victims and the survivors of the Holocaust ... We welcome the decision by Abbeys Auctions to put principles before profits and to withdraw these blood-soaked pieces of hate," the organisation's chairman Dvir Abramovich said in a statement.
But Dr Abramovich added, "I wonder why it took public pressure for them to understand that this degenerate and indecent trade in death should not find a home in their auction".
Dr Dvir Abramovich from the Anti-Defamation Commission. Source: Supplied
"I call on all auctioneers to look into their heart, to think about the bereaved families who lost loved ones in the Holocaust, and the Australian soldiers who gave their lives to defeat the Third Reich, and to pledge to never offer Nazi memorabilia for sale in the future."
And while all Nazi-era items have been removed, there remain other Axis Powers memorabilia on the Abbeys Auctions catalogue as of Friday evening.
A "Japanese WW2 era katana sword" remains on sale. Source: Abbeys Auctions
One lot, starting at $400, is a "Japanese WW2 era katana sword".
