Named after SS Nazi war criminal

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.

It arrived in Holland just three weeks before the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and just days before four Jews were killed in a kosher supermarket during the Paris terror attacks.

But as Holocaust Memorial Day nears, anger has erupted after it was revealed Pieter Schelte Heerema was a Dutch officer in the Waffen SS. 

The vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jonathan Arkush told the Observer: '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.'

The ship's arrival in Rotterdam has been trumpeted by energy company Royal Dutch Shell, which in a press release by Allseas confirms it will be one of the vessel's first clients. 

John Donovan, a former Shell contractor who has wrote a book on the company's relations to the Third Reich also told the newspaper: 'This public homage by Edward Heerema as the wealthy son of a Nazi war criminal is an affront to the relatives of tens of millions of souls who perished at the hands of Nazi Germany.'

Schelte was the father of Dutchman Edward Heerema, the owner of company Allseas, who commissioned the building of the ship. 

He was an officer in the Waffen SS during the Second World War, when he acted as a director for the Dutch East Company.

It is thought he was responsible for recruiting Dutch men to be put into forced labour in Nazi-occupied territories in Eastern Europe.

(dailymail.co.uk)