World's Largest Ship Sparks Outrage
Jewish groups in the Netherlands and Britain 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 Pieter Schelte, which is so big it can lift oil rigs out of the water, is docked in Rotterdam after being constructed at the Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering shipyard in South Korea.
A statement from Jonathan Arkush, the vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, appeared in the Guardian news paper says: “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.”
Pieter Schelte Hereema was in the SS during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, but later joined the Resistance. Schelte, a Dutch naval architect, was part of the Waffen SS, the combat arm of the Nazi party's Schutzstaffel. He was arrested in March 1944 and tried for war crimes. He died in 1981.
The ship belongs to the Swiss-based Allseas group, which is owned by Schelte's son, Edward Heerema. The company said it does not plan to rename the ship.
The ship, capable of lifting oil rigs five times heavier than the Eiffel Tower, arrived in Rotterdam on January 8 for finishing touches before entering service in the European offshore oil industry.
The ship is at present being prepared for deployment to service British companies in the North Sea. Allseas describes it as a "382 m long, 124 m wide dynamically positioned (DP) platform installation / decommissioning and pipelay vessel."