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.
The auction house says the sale from “one of the greatest jewelry collections” is expected to reap some $150 million. Proceeds are to benefit her Vienna art museum, welfare for children, and medical research. Christie’s — as criticism of the auction grew — said it planned to chip in some of its profits from the sale to Holocaust education.
