Some Oppose Move to Name Nazi Camp Road ‘Anne Frank’

Controversy has flared over a proposal to name a road leading to the former concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen after Anne Frank.

Frank, the Jewish girl whose famous diary detailed the horrors of life in hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam, perished at age 15 at Bergen-Belsen in March, 1945.

Local Social Democrats in the West German town of Bergen want the main road to the site renamed “Anne Frank Street” from “Belsen Street,” but the majority Christian Democrats pledged Monday to vote down the proposal when the town council debates it tonight.

“Nobody has anything against the name Anne Frank. But the people of Bergen are fed up with shouldering an additional burden of guilt for what happened at Bergen-Belsen,” Christian Democrat councilor Guenther Ernst said in a telephone interview.

The Social Democrats suggested the name change on May 8, the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, after visits to Bergen-Belsen by President Reagan and Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

The local weekly newspaper, which Ernst publishes, has been filled with letters from readers condemning the proposal. One said the name “Anne Frank Street” would “brand Bergen with the mark of Cain.”