540MINUTES

BY OREN YANIV
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Football fans and Jewish groups are outraged over the prospect of a new Giants and Jets stadium being named for German insurer Allianz because of its Nazi ties in World War II.

The company insured the Auschwitz death camp and had a chief executive serving in Hitler's cabinet. The company is on the short list of those vying to slap their name on the Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey via a lucrative sponsorship deal.

The possibility of what some saw as a former Third Reich enabler getting its name on their ballpark has some Big Blue and Gang Green fans vowing boycott.

"I think it's terrible, but that's the mighty dollar," Giants fan Keith Hayes, 33, said of the name.

"It would be an insult," said Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "It's putting their name in lights for generations to come."

Debate over Allianz is also heating up the Net and is the talk of sports radio.

A season-ticket holder who posted under the name xxvnyg80 in a Giants Internet forum said he wrote team owner John Mara, begging him to sack the idea.

Allianz would reportedly pay $20 million to $30 million per year for the naming rights of the $1.3 billion stadium, which is to open in 2010.

During the Holocaust, the same company refused to pay off life insurance stipends to Jews and sent their policies' proceeds to the Nazis instead, Holocaust historians have written.

Allianz, which employs 11,000 people in the U.S. and sponsors golf and racing events, has acknowledged its shameful past and has shelled out millions in restitution.

Giants and Jets fans join uproar over stadium naming rights bid by firm with Holocaust ties....