On Streets Paved With Acrimony

By David Behrens | Staff Writer

When Camp Siegfried opened in the mid-1930s, its pro-Nazi founders attempted to memorialize their movement by naming the streets of German Gardens, an adjoining subdivision, after the Third Reich's most notorious leaders.

The tributes to the Nazi hierarchy included a Hitler Street, a Goering Street and a Goebbels Street. The lakefront camp, organized by the German-American Bund in 1935, is long gone and so are the street signs in the subdivision that was laid out at the same time.

But the street names live on in the archives of Suffolk County.

Over the years, residents have voiced occasional protests, and a number of town and county resolutions have been passed, calling for the removal of the offending names from the subdivision maps in the county clerk's office.

Other residents have protested any erasure of the traces of Nazism from the historical record, arguing that the street names on the original maps serve as a healthy reminder of the horrors of a half-century ago.

The actual street signs were removed by the Town of Brookhaven in 1940, and the byways in German Gardens were renamed. ``By then, many of the original signs had been stolen by collectors, after World War II broke out in Europe in 1939,'' said Marvin Miller, author of the first history of the bund's role on Long Island, in a recent interview.

In the mid-1940s, Brookhaven's Town Board passed several resolutions calling for the removal of the pro-Nazi names from the original subdivision maps, Miller said. But town officials found they apparently had no power to change the records.

In 1995, the issue arose again when Suffolk lawmakers passed a ``sense of the Legislature'' resolution, sponsored by Herb Davis (R-Yaphank). It called for the removal of pro-Nazi references on the subdivision records.

However, the resolution was not carried out, according to the county clerk's office, because the required authorization has not been approved by the state Legislature. Without such approval by the legislators, the clerk's office must follow the mandates regarding subdivisions of the New York State Real Property Law. ``So far, we have heard nothing from the state Legislature,'' said a spokeswoman for the clerk's office.

Preservation of the original documents has been welcomed by Miller, a retired social studies teacher at Commack High School. Earlier this year, he called for the county Legislature to rescind its 1995 resolution.

Public opinion was divided in 1995 on the question of rewriting history. At the time, Miller called the Legislature's resolution ``an inappropriate act of historical revisionism ... denying not only Yaphank's youngsters but also teachers from gaining information about the area's past.''

Davis had differed, arguing that the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II was an appropriate time to erase the reminders of Nazism. Original subdivision maps could be filed in county archives, he suggested.

At the time, many newer Yaphank residents expressed surprise at the village's connection with the Hitler regime. A few German Gardens residents recalled recently that, unexpectedly, the controversial old street names did show up in parentheses, next to the newer names, when they bought their homes and received maps of their lots.

``I thought it was kind of interesting,'' Yaphank resident Maggie McCutchen said in 1995. ``I think they should leave it, really. It's part of history. I'm glad they changed the street names but I don't see what difference it's going to make if they take it off the map.''