Today In Bad Ideas: Nazi Pilot Honored For Breaking Glass Ceiling

Image by Getty Images

By Phoebe Maltz Bovy March 13, 2017

In The Canadian Jewish News, Janice Arnold reports that the Vancouver-based Institute for Women of Aviation Worldwide (IWAW), a non-profit sponsored partly by Air Canada, is honoring Hanna Reitsch for her barrier-breaking role as first woman helicopter pilot. “The problem,” writes Arnold, “is that Hanna Reitsch was a Nazi, and apparently an unrepentant one.”

This seems to me (and, according to the story, to B’nai Brith) like a deal-breaker: It’s good and well to celebrate women’s professional achievements, but how about not ones within Nazism? Is that too much to ask?

Hanna Reitsch in 1941. Image by Getty Images

Arnold reports that “Mireille Goyer, founder and president of IWAW, defended her choice, arguing that Reitsch’s historic achievement and talent as an aviator, as well as her postwar work in Africa, are distinguishable from her politics.”

Hmm. In my opinion, no, a Nazi pilot’s achievements in aviation can’t be separated from the “politics” in question. I’m not sure which branch of feminism it is that celebrates Nazi women for professional achievements, only that it’s not one I’d want any part of.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a former editor of the Sisterhood blog at the Forward. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including The New Republic and The Atlantic. Her book, “The Perils of ‘Privilege,’” was published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017. She has a PhD in French and French Studies from New York University, and has read a lot of 19th century French Jewish newspapers for a 21st century American.

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