US: 'Swastika' retirement home draws new complaints
From the ground the Wesley Acres Methodist retirement home in Alabama looks like any other building. But from the air the outline is unmistakable: It is one big swastika.
Now, prompted by complaints from a Jewish activist, the agency that owns the government-funded building is planning to alter its shape to disguise the Nazi symbol. The move comes just a few years after it underwent a million-dollar design modification meant to end similar complaints from a US senator.
“The difficulty is there are a limited number of options for fixing a building that has been there for some time,” said Mike Giles, of the Methodist Homes Corporation.
“We have to come up with a way to fix an appearance that we want solved and not hurt our residents."
Wesley Acres provides government-subsidised housing for 117 low-income people aged 62 and above. Most have no reason to suspect their hallways take on a sinister shape.
The one-story building, designed in the mid-1970s and completed in 1980, had two wings added in 2001, but they did little to hide the offensive shape.
Options for the new renovations include the addition of covered porches or other outdoor areas.
The latest complaint is from Avrahaum Segol, the same Israeli-American researcher who last fall helped publicise a swastika-shaped barracks at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego. The Navy said it would alter the building, which opened in the 1960s, but the work has not yet been done.
Mr Segol calls the Alabama retirement home a “sister swastika” to the building in California and says they were both part of a tangled, government-funded conspiracy to honour Nazis.
Mr Segol claims the swastika shape of Wesley Acres in Decatur pays homage to the German scientists who came to nearby Huntsville after Second World War and designed the rockets that put Americans on the moon.
Methodist Homes said Segol’s conspiracy claims were ridiculous. The building was originally designed to be much larger, he said, and cutbacks resulted in a shape that resembled the four-armed swastika.
The shape of the retirement centre is evident in satellite photos available on the internet. But it is located in a residential section in a city with few tall buildings, and many in Decatur have no idea Wesley Acres resembles a swastika.
