The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has rejected Brooklyn District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman’s call on the Agency and President Reagan to strip Nazi war criminal Arthur Rudolph of NASA’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Medal, given to him in 1969 for his contributions to the Saturn V rocket program.
The 78-year-old German-born rocket scientist is held responsible for the deaths of thousands of slave laborers at the Nazi rocket factory attached to the Dora-Nordhausen concentration camp during World War II. A third to one-half of Dora’s 60,000 prisoners died.
Rudolph left the United States and surrendered his citizenship rather than face Justice Department charges that he “participated in the persecution of forced laborers, including concentration camp inmates, who were employed there under inhumane conditions.” Rudolph, reportedly in West Germany, left the U.S. several months before the Justice Department’s announcement last October.
Following the announcement by the Justice Department, Holtzman telegraphed Reagan and NASA Administrator James Beggs, urging that Rudolph be stripped of the award from NASA “because of the unspeakable crimes committed against thousands of slave laborers in his charge” at the Dora-Nordhausen rocket factory.
In asserting that NASA would let Rudolph keep his award, Eugene Marianetti, chief of NASA’s special events branch, said in a letter to Holtzman that “to rescind the medal would serve no useful purpose, since it has nothing in common with the allegation brought against him.”
Holtzman, responding to Marianetti’s letter, said “It is an affront to the millions who died to suggest. that it would serve no useful purpose to strip this notorious Nazi murderer of his high American honors. It is deplorable that NASA has responded in this way.”
“Arthur Rudolph was forced to leave this country because of the unspeakable crimes he committed against thousands of slave laborers in his charge … To continue to honor this bestial killer implies that America condones his unforgiveable acts.”
Rudolph was brought to the U.S. in 1945 along with 117 other German scientists and technicians. He became director of the Army’s Redstone and Pershing missile programs and later manager of the Saturn V project for NASA before retiring in 1969. In 1968, he was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Service Medal.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
