Harvard, Stanford and NASA Are Still Glorifying Nazis

In a shocking opinion piece in the New York Times, Lev Golinkin writes of the celebration of high-profile Nazis whose names still grace Harvard and Stanford programs, a part of NASA’s Kennedy Space center, and a U.S army post. As Harvard contemplates the university’s history of profiting from slavery, Golinkin urges these institutions to reckon the fellowships and scholarships still called by the names of men who committed mass genocide and aided Hitler with their scientific research to exterminate the Jewish nation.

How did this happen to begin with?

The former Nazis were needed by the U.S. after the war for their expertise and technology. Germany was divided between east and west. The Soviet Union became America’s largest adversary. Washington had to compete with the Kremlin and stop the spread of Communism in Europe. Many Nazis became cohorts with the U.S. in their fight of the Cold War. Suddenly, their past was sanitized, blood stains laundered. Washington even recruited former Nazi scientists through their infamous Operation Paperclip program.

Meet the Nazis whose names are still being honored:

Alfred Krupp was an industrial baron who was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials. Krupp had a company that put approximately 100,000 people to work in Auschwitz, in a slaved-built factory. Forced laborers included children and concentration camp inmates.

Alfred Krupp
Photo Credit: Arnold Newman

In 1974, millions of dollars from Krupp were used to create the Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies as well as the Krupp Foundation Dissertation Research Fellowship at Harvard. There is no mention of Krupp’s crimes against mankind. Those who carry on his name as they study, unknowingly carry the shadows of his atrocities as well.

Then there are von Braun and Kurt Debus, two scientists who handed Hitler the V-2 ballistic missile. This missile was built by concentration camp prisoners in an underground complex that shouted death. At least 10,000 enslaved captives were killed while making these rockets. The earth was filled with emaciated corpses, discovered by American troops upon liberation. Who cannot be shaken and stunned by such a sight?

Yet, these two scientists were offered jobs in Washington.

Wernher von Braun (center) in 1961 with fellow Operation Paperclip scientists working on a Saturn rocket.
Photo Credit: NASA

Golinkin quotes the ‘About Us” section of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center (a Smithsonian affiliated museum and host of a Space Camp program lauding von Braun): “Dr. Werner von Braun and his team of rocket scientists transformed Huntsville, Alabama…into a technology center that today is home to the second-largest research park in the United States.” Von Braun is honored on the website, his name is affixed to a research hall at the University of Alabama, a performing arts center, and a planetarium.

How astonishing to celebrate art, music and space with the name of one who snuffed the life out of the most innocent of souls on this planet. Indeed, this was the cruel paradox of Hitler and his killing machines. They were the great lovers of art, music and culture, while murdering millions to the sounds of their favorite concertos.

Wernher Von Braun, Arthur Rudolph, Hubertus Strughold

And in Florida, there is the NASA Kennedy Space Center’s visitor complex where you will find the Dr. Kurt H. Debus Conference facility. His clipped biography is presented as ambiguous, a short paragraph about his having lived in Germany. It is beyond belief that on June 24^th, the Kennedy Space Center’s director accepted the Dr. Kurt H. Debus Award. The scientist who enabled mass murder was fêted on NASA’s webpage.

Finally, the Redstone Arsenal, a U.S. army post next to Huntsville, has a complex named after von Braun. Photos are featured and he is described as the technical director of the center where the V-2 was developed. Who, today, even has any idea of what the V-2 was?

These institutions have conveniently whitewashed wicked crimes, scrubbed away the stench of deadly deeds, and erased the dark history of these Nazi criminals.

Living with Dignity

For me, this is personal.

My father, Rabbi Meshulam Jungreis, was put into a slave labor camp during the Holocaust. He lost his entire family and suffered beyond human comprehension. He did not speak often about those hellish times. My father preferred to celebrate life, love and his Judaism. But I do remember a somber moment when I was at my father’s bedside in Sloan Kettering. It was the final weeks of my father’s life. His face was gaunt, his body ravaged by illness. We walked to the hallway and my father passed by a mirror. He was visibly shocked.

“Sheyfelah,“ he said, “the last time I saw myself like this was when I was in the slave labor camps under the beastly Nazis. I refused to eat anything that was not kosher. One day I found some rotten beets on the ground and stuffed them into my uniform. Somehow, the Nazi commando heard….and he shouted that I must come to the front of the line. ‘Jungreis, 100 pushups, schnell!’ I got on the freezing earth and with each pushup, the beets came rolling out. And with each beet came another beating blow on my body. But I would not give in. I would not surrender my spirit, my faith.”

My father’s eyes moistened and I began to cry.

What is the true meaning of strength? What is the definition of a life legacy?

How can we still honor those who have committed such atrocities?

To live with dignity means that we are not allowed to forget those who tried to wipe us off the face of this earth. Shame on those who value science and education more than they value the sacredness of life itself.