KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Two Adopt-a-Highway signs on a Missouri road acknowledge a neo- Nazi group’s participation in the state’s litter- prevention program.
But if Gov. Jay Nixon signs a large transportation bill, that half-mile section of road will be renamed “Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel Memorial Highway” in honor of a rabbi who narrowly escaped the Nazis in World War II.
The Springfield unit of the National Socialist Movement committed last year to clean up trash along the section of Highway 160 near the city limits in west Springfield. Two signs noting the group’s membership in the program went up last October.
“Obviously, there were people raising the concern that this is the wrong message for people to see driving down a Missouri highway, that there are National Socialists out here,” said Rabbi Alan L. Cohen of the Jewish Community Relations Board of Kansas City.
