Helmut Horten’s story was complicated, said Peter Hoeres, a historian at the University of Würzburg, in Germany. And the auction house says the sale features more Bulgari jewels than ever assembled for a single auction.īut the auction has been steeped in controversy: The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights group, “demanded” that Christie’s withdraw the sale, insisting that billions in riches that were amassed by Horten’s husband - Helmut Horten - were the “sum of profits from Nazi ‘Aryanization’ of Jewish department stores” under Nazi Germany.” A dazzling diamond necklace could fetch $15 million or more. There’s a record-setting ruby ring that Heidi Horten bought for $30 million in 2015. The sale has already begun online, but also takes place in-person in two parts on Wednesday and Friday at a ritzy Geneva hotel. Christie’s - as criticism of the auction grew - said it planned to chip in some of its profits from the sale to Holocaust education. Proceeds are to benefit her Vienna art museum, welfare for children, and medical research. The auction house says the sale from “one of the greatest jewelry collections” is expected to reap some $150 million.

GENEVA (AP) - Christie’s is auctioning a staggering 700 pieces of jewelry from the collection of the late Heidi Horten, an Austrian heiress whose German husband built a retail empire starting in the 1930s - in part from department stores and other assets sold by desperate Jews as they fled Nazi Germany.

Jewels the making of a woman