New attention shined on a decades old program at Stanford University this week, when a political writer raised questions about an internship named for a long-dead industrialist who used slave labor to support the Nazi regime and was convicted of war crimes.
The Krupp Internship Program at Stanford University allows students to immerse themselves in Germany, working and receiving invaluable international experience. According to the university’s website, “more than 1,300 Stanford students have completed full-time, paid internships at over 590 German host companies and institutions after studying at Stanford in Berlin” through the program.
While the program intends to give students “deeper immersion into German language and culture,” its namesake is a part of the broader issue of “deception by omission,” according to a recent New York Times opinion piece from political writer Lev Golinkin. In the article, titled “Why Do Stanford, Harvard and NASA Still Honor a Nazi Past?", Golinkin, a Jewish Ukrainian-born journalist, discusses the American legacies of institutions and programs named for Nazi rocket scientists Wernher von Braun and Kurt Debus, as well as the influence of Krupp’s fortune long after his death.
“From NASA to Stanford to the United States Army, American institutions continue to acknowledge — and sometimes even celebrate — high-profile former Nazis,” Golinkin writes. “The institutions … whitewash the Nazi past of men whose names grace Harvard and Stanford programs, part of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center … "
Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach was a 20th-century German industrialist convicted in 1948 for crimes against humanity, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. His company supplied weapons and other war materials to the German military over the course of World War II using the labor of about 100,000 forced laborers, which included foreign civilians, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners.
Krupp at one time attempted to construct a weapons part plant at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, using prisoners as laborers, but those plans fell through.
Krupp was sentenced to 12 years in prison but only served three after his sentence was commuted in 1951. He later became the namesake of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, which sponsors the Stanford internship program. Krupp died in 1967.
Von Braun and Debus designed and tested rockets for the Nazi regime before being recruited to come to America after World War II and pioneering the American space program. Their names are seen on NASA facilities in and around the Gulf Coast, on scholarships and, most unusually, on the moon, where both men — whose contributions to the V-2 rocket program allowed Hitler to terrorize thousands of civilians with fire rained from the sky in nightly attacks— have craters named in their honor.
When asked for comment, Stanford officials released a statement promoting the Internship program, which it said “give(s) Stanford students the opportunity to deepen their understanding of German culture and people through practical professional experiences … .” The statement mentions by name Berthold Beitz, former head of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, who established the program and is credited with saving hundreds of Jews during World War II.
The statement did not directly address whether university officials believed it was appropriate to offer aid to students under the name of a convicted war criminal.
The Stanford website for The Krupp Internship Program briefly mentions Krupp’s involvement in the Holocaust, noting that he was found guilty at Nuremberg in 1947 of using concentration camp labor and of plundering occupied countries.
