Dolls from Nazi concentration camp sell for £5.6k

The cloth dolls were made by inmates at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after it was liberated from the Nazis in 1945

Four dolls made to mark the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 have sold at auction for £5,625.

The Red Cross cloth dolls were made by Jewish prisoners after the Allies liberated the Bergen-Belsen camp in World War Two.

They were sold at auction in Newbury, Berkshire, along with a Victorian doll's house which sold for £54,560.

The dolls belonged to a Birmingham collector who had amassed more than 500 antique dolls over 70 years.

The concentration camp dolls were made by Polish prisoners of war who were nursed back to health by Red Cross teams after the German camp was liberated, Special Auction Services said.

Jewish inmates were tattooed when they arrived at Nazi concentration camps - something that was reflected on the dolls

Women and children were given scraps of cloth and made this type of doll as they were slowly reintroduced to food, the auction house added.

Six of the dolls were gifted to Red Cross nurses, one of whom took them to the vendor's grandmother in 1953, who ran Birmingham's Dolls' Hospital.

The dolls were bought by a German toy museum

The vendor later inherited her grandmother's doll collection.

The auction house said the dolls had rarely been seen in public, apart from a tour of England by the Women's Institute in the 1950s, and to show Anne Frank's father in the late 1970s.

The dolls were bought for a German toy museum.

The doll's house appeared on the BBC's Antiques Road Show programme and had been featured in magazines

The Victorian doll's house, which sold for well beyond its estimated £15,000 and came with original furnishings and decoration, had belonged to Katherine Jeffray who died in 1927.

It had appeared on the BBC's Antiques Road Show programme and had been featured in magazines.

On Tuesday, the Berkshire auction house sold a teddy bear collection for £27,000.

It belonged to Katherine Jeffray and came with its original furnishings and decoration