Nazi name for giant Dutch ship draws outcry

The Jewish question
Heerema's file at the NIOD contains a report of a speech he gave in 1941 in which he 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.

After winning promotions within the Waffen SS, Heerema became assistant director of an organization that rounded up unemployed Dutch workers and resettled them in Nazi-occupied areas of Eastern Europe, where hundreds died.

After a falling-out with his German superiors in August 1943, Heerema disappeared until his arrest in Switzerland in March 1944.

After his release in November, 1946, he headed to Venezuela where he began a new company and rapidly achieved success.

As a postwar industrialist he was credited with such important innovations as the semi-submersible crane vessel for work in rough seas.

He became a multimillionaire and member of the Dutch elite, but questions about his past resurfaced periodically until his death in 1981.

Towering dimensions
The new ship, to be used for laying oil pipes and decommissioning North Sea oil rigs, will be 1,253 feet long and 384 feet wide, making it the world's largest in area, and the heaviest at 210,000 tons, Allseas says.

It said on Oct. 24 the financial crisis would not prevent the ship's completion in 2012. It said it has reached agreement on around $250 million worth of contracts and is reviewing bids from shipyards in Southeast Asia to build the hull.

The tax break prompted Sharon Gesthuizen, a lawmaker of the opposition Socialist Party, to put formal questions to the Economic Affairs Ministry on Oct. 28.

"Do you see it as your responsibility to protest the naming of this ship, given the extreme sensitivity of the historical events that are connected to that name?" She asked.

The ministry has two weeks to respond.

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