Mr Huber was very young — just 17 — when he volunteered for the SS. His contribution to New Zealand skiing, Mt Hutt especially, since moving here in the 1950s has been hugely significant. He has a large family living in this country.
But those are not “mitigating factors”, and they do not prevent us asking one salient question: Should anything in New Zealand be named in honour of a member of a group responsible for some of the worst atrocities in history?
The answer, surely, is that never, in any circumstances, is that appropriate. Nothing, anywhere, should carry the name of a cog in the Nazis’ genocidal machine.
Mt Hutt representatives should have acted sooner. But it is not too late. They can still recognise the contribution made by Mr Huber to the ski area and not carry open, public reminders of a Nazi link.
There was a similar case in Akaroa earlier this year when the Bully Hayes restaurant was called out for honouring an American whose deeds in the Pacific included human trafficking, and abducting and raping young women and children.
We can’t change history. We can’t erase it. But we can recognise when it is very obviously not right to just ignore it.
