Now That's Cold

Pieter Schelte's wedding in 1942

Heil Hitler asshole.

Leaders of Jewish communities and Holocaust memorial groups in Britain and the Netherlands have reacted with rage and despair at the arrival in Rotterdam of the world’s biggest ship, the Pieter Schelte, named after a Dutch officer in the Waffen-SS.

The vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jonathan Arkush, said: “Naming such a ship after an SS officer who was convicted of war crimes is an insult to the millions who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis. We urge the ship’s owners to reconsider and rename the ship after someone more appropriate.”

Esther Voet, director of the Centre for Information and Documentation on Israel (Cidi), based in The Hague, said that the timing of the ship’s arrival, shortly before Jews were targeted and killed in Paris and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, was “a coincidence, I’m sure, but a sign of the times. We lost our battle to have the ship’s name changed, and we are left eating dust.”

Story here.

Under direction of the Nazi SS, Pieter Schelte was director of the Dutch East Company which was charged with the "colonization of Eastern Europe." He was responsible for picking up Dutch men who were put to forced labor in Nazi-occupied Baltic territories in Eastern Europe; hundreds lost their lives.

Schelte hated Jews and was quoted as saying "The German race is model. The Jewish race, by comparison, is parasitic ... therefore the Jewish question must be resolved in every Aryan country." Some 70 percent of the Netherlands' 140,000 Jews perished in the Holocaust.

Schelte allegedly joined the resistance before the war ended but he fled to Switzerland were he was apprehended (by whom?) in 1944. Maybe he did have a change of heart but his wedding was celebrated in Nazi publications and prominent Nazi's were in attendance. I also think that more than a few guilders changed hands in covering his ass - this guy had some bucks.

The Schelte is the world's biggest ship, over 1,250 feet long and 407 feet wide.

The Waffen SS

The Waffen-SS (Armed SS) was created as the armed wing of the Nazi Party's Schutzstaffel (SS, "Protective Squadron"), and gradually developed into a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of Nazi Germany.

The Waffen-SS grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions during World War II, and served alongside the Heer (regular army) but was never formally part of it. Adolf Hitler resisted integrating the Waffen-SS into the army, as it was to remain the armed wing of the Party and to become an elite police force once the war was won. 

Yeah, I'd name the world's largest ship after him. This POS died in 1981; obviously his family is trying to rehabilitate his name. After the war he did not dedicate himself to humanitarian purposes to atone for the hundreds he helped kill. He pursued money. I doubt any of it went to the families of the men he killed.