Town criticized for honoring V2 scientist

[Dave Monroe]

Town criticized for honoring V2 scientist
Tue Feb 5, 2008 12:36pm EST
By Dave Graham

BERLIN (Reuters) - 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 honor of
Klaus Riedel, who played a central role in the Nazis' development of
the V-2 rocket program, to mark the centenary of his birth.

The Nazis used thousands of slave laborers 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 percent 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 laborers 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 laborers died due to their work
on the V-2, which killed around 7,000 military and civilian personnel
before the Third Reich collapsed.

BURDEN OF GUILT

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.

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN0517434020080205