After a neo-Nazi group adopted a section of highway in Springfield, Mo., to pick up trash, state lawmakers plan to rename that section of road after a Jewish theologian who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
But the daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel objects to naming the half mile cleaned by the National Socialists Movement after her father, calling the plan "highly inappropriate and vulgar," the AP reports.
"I don't want Nazis stomping on a highway named for my father. What are they going to do then if they don't pick up the litter? The whole thing is disgusting," said Susannah Heschel, professor of Jewish history at Dartmouth College.
"It may be an attempt to teach the neo-Nazis a lesson," she said. "But I think it's an affront to my father's dignity to attach his name to a neo-Nazi highway." Read more.
Last year, Heschel published the book, "The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany," which examines a group of German Protestant theologians who in 1939 established an Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life.
The Missouri measure is also unpopular with some members of the National Socialist Movement:
"I think it's childish," Cynthia Keene, 38, a sergeant in the group's Springfield unit, told the NYT. "If they want to have Nazis out there stomping on a Jewish-named highway, that's their choice."
Leave a comment