Manhattan Borough Mayor Mark Levine said the city must remove the names of Nazi collaborators Henri Philippe Pétain and Pierre Laval from the Canyon of Heroes – nearly 100 years after they were honored with a tape parade.
“There are tough calls here about Heroes Canyon and usually about reconsidering modern monuments, but we should always all agree that Nazi collaborators are only off the hook,” Levine, who’s Jewish, told The Post.
Pétain and Laval fell into international disgrace after collaborating with the Third Reich in sending 1000’s of Jews to their deaths, serving respectively as Supreme Leader and Prime Minister of Vichy France after the conquest of Germany in 1941.
Laval, the French Prime Minister during his parade on October 22, 1931, was executed for his crimes in 1945, while Pétain died in prison in 1951. A fascist-loving Frenchman.
Their ignominious fall was especially painful for Pétain, a person admired around the world as the “Lion of Verdun” who prevented the Germans from defeating the Allied forces in a vital battle of the First World War in 1916.
Despite their role in a single of the best crimes in human history, Recent York put their names on the Broadway sidewalk 20 years ago next to a protracted list of military heroes, politicians, sports idols and more honored with parades announced by mayors.
“You may assume that names have been added over the last century,” Levine said of the names carved into the Broadway pavement. “It’s a reasonably recent development.”
History has not been kind to some individuals who were once honored by Recent Yorkers, reminiscent of former South Vietnamese strongman Ngo Dinh Diem, who was honored on Broadway six years before his death in a 1963 US-backed military coup.
But Pétain and Laval’s crimes are on an entire other level, in accordance with Levine, who will argue for his or her removal at Friday’s press conference on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
He said he would formally detail his opposition to their continued presence in a letter to the City Design Commission, which has the final word on whether disgraced Frenchmen will change into the first people whose names are removed from the pavement.
While former mayor Bill de Blasio tried unsuccessfully to remove their names, Levine expressed confidence that he could succeed, given the role Pétain and Laval played in helping the Nazi regime kill some 6 million Jews during World War II together with hundreds of thousands of other groups of victims of the Holocaust reminiscent of individuals with disabilities, Roma, Slavs, prisoners of war and others.
There could also be discussions in the future about the potential removal of other controversial figures from Canyon of Heroes, but why not start with two Nazi collaborators tried and convicted by their very own country way back, Levine argues, although French policemen have sometimes fought Pétain’s legacy given his legacy World War I heroism.
“They were lively participants in the Nazi regime in Europe, a rustic that persecuted and killed countless students,” he said.