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BERLIN - A German town has been accused of encouraging neo-Nazism after naming a school after a scientist who helped build the V-2 rockets launched against Allied targets during World War Two.
Bernstadt auf dem Eigen has renamed a secondary school in honour of Klaus Riedel, who played a central role in the Nazis' development of the V-2 rocket programme, to mark the centenary of his birth.
The Nazis used thousands of slave labourers to build the V-2 which were fired at Antwerp and London near the end of the war, killing thousands.
Astrid Guenther-Schmidt, a Green party member of Saxony's state parliament in eastern Germany, said naming the school after Riedel was completely inappropriate and an open invitation to the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD).
"If the NPD find out that there's a monument to one of the people behind the V-2 rocket, then I'd be extremely worried they're going to hold rallies all the time there," she said.
The NPD, which has been compared to the Nazi party, enjoys significant support in Bernstadt's state of Saxony and won more than 9 per cent of votes in the last regional election.
A slideshow on the school's website - which has been changed following complaints - mentions V-2 rockets were fired on Britain "killing many innocent people".
"They should make clear forced labourers made the V-2 under the most inhuman conditions, that there were mass executions there every week...and publicly attest to knowing this - then explain why they chose the name," said Guenther-Schmidt.
Historians estimate up to 20,000 slave labourers died due to their work on the V-2, which killed around 7000 military and civilian personnel before the Third Reich collapsed.
Local mayor Gunter Lange told Reuters he stood by the school decision. He insisted Riedel was not a Nazi and deserved recognition for his contributions to rocket science.
"The name Klaus Riedel has been a fixture in the town for many years. There's been a monument to him here since the 1990s. There's a crater on the moon named after him. And nobody has ever been bothered by it until now."
Johannes Weyer, an expert on sociological technology studies at Dortmund's Technical University, said Riedel, who developed the V-2's mobile launch pads, had been well aware of what the Nazis were planning.
"These people bear a heavy burden of guilt," he said. "You can't develop rockets for the Nazis and simultaneously be against them. Naming a school after someone who had a leading function on this rocket project raises serious moral issues."
Mayor Lange conceded the choice of Riedel, who died in an automobile accident in 1944, was "problematic" and he would discuss it at the next meeting of the town council.
"Then they'll have to decide if we say: `Right, let's leave it,' or whether we go back on it a bit after all'," he said.
- REUTERS
