Exploring the History of North American Monuments & Statues that Bestow Honor on Nazi Collaborators
Edited by: Fern Sidman
As the woke, progressive cadre of activists continue to demand the destruction of statues and monuments across the length and breadth of America of those historical figures they deem to be racist, the question that begs to be answered is why? Since the emergence of the identity politics movement and the “everyone is a racist” revolution that was spawned in the aftermath of the 2020 killing of George Floyd by white police officers in Minneapolis, this demand has taken on new meaning.
While it is true that systemic racism must be squarely addressed, the plain fact is that America has honored Nazi collaborators and supporters of fascism for the last century. This is a known fact, yet such historically persecuted groups as Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and dissident intellectuals have not, until recently uttered a word of protestation over such abhorrent praise for those who committed genocide against them.
In January 2021, an investigation by The Forward identified more than 1,500 statues and streets honoring Nazi collaborators around the world. In the US alone, there are at least 37 such monuments.
One need only walk along Broadway is lower Manhattan to see a plaque honoring Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain (1856–1951). The Forward reported that in the aftermath of the Nazi siege of France during World War II, Pétain led the Vichy Regime, which was a puppet government of the Third Reich. In that capacity, he enacted anti-Semitic laws and deported around 76,000 Jews, mostly to Auschwitz.
Prior to becoming a Third Reich puppet, Pétain was a WWI hero, according to The Forward report. In 1931, he received a ticker-tape parade in New York City for his “heroism” during the “Great War.” Memorializing Petain’s status as a war hero is the Broadway plaque which was unveiled in 2004, A second plaque memorializes a parade to Pierre Laval (1883–1945), who also became a Vichy lackey and played a key role in deporting France’s Jews, the Forward reported.
A November 1, 2022 report by Billy Anania on the ArtNews.com web site said that “in 2018, the New York City Council voted against removing the Pétain and Laval plaques to avoid what they called “cultural amnesia.” Meanwhile, Canada renamed Mount Pétain in the Canadian Rockies last year, and France no longer has any memorials to either man.”
The ArtNews.com web site added that “Pétain’s case is unique because the honors bestowed upon him took place when he was a WWI hero, before he served the Nazis. That puts them in a different category from monuments erected to perpetrators after they became collaborators.”
The U.S. also has 11 streets named after Pétain in: Hartselle, Alabama; Prichard, Alabama; Yuma, Colorado; Abbeville, Louisiana; Monroe, Louisiana; Goffstown, New Hampshire; Milltown, New Jersey; Defiance, Ohio; Ellwood City, Pennsylvania; Nemacolin, Pennsylvania; and Dallas, Texas, the report added.
The Forward also reported that there is a hill behind Saint Euphrosynia Belarusian Orthodox Church in South River, New Jersey where there stands a monument dedicated to “those who fought for freedom and independence of Byelorussia.”
ArtNews.com reported that on the back of the monument, it lists names of militiamen from the Byelorussian Home Defence (BHD). This mostly volunteer battalion of nationalists slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews and Poles in the mid-1940s, the report added.
Journalist Lev Golinkin, who led the Forward investigation, told ArtNews that monuments like this insidiously warp the public’s historical understanding.
“This is a bit more subtle compared to typical Holocaust distortion, which argues that it never happened,” Golinkin said. “These collaborators actually co-opted the Holocaust — instead of denying it, they claimed to be victims themselves. Over time, I noticed the same patterns and realized that so few people are paying attention because these countries are American allies, either in the European Union or North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), so they often get a pass.”
It also appears that our neighbor north of the border is also not exempt from erecting monuments and statues that honor Nazi collaborators. According to a August 12, 2021 report in the Edmonton Journal in Alberta, Canada, a Canadian Jewish organization once again called for the removal of two Edmonton monuments commemorating Ukrainians who fought with Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
The report indicated that the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies (FSWC) called for the removal of a bust of Roman Shukhevych, which has stood outside the Ukrainian Youth Unity Complex in north Edmonton since the early 1970s.
The Edmonton Journal also reported that the Shukhevych statue, which has previously been vandalized, has been a lightning rod for controversy since it was erected in 1973.
Shukhevych, who commanded various military units including the German-backed Nachtigall Battalion and the nationalist Ukrainian Insurgent Army (which at various times fought both the Nazis and the Soviets), is a hero to many Ukrainians. In 2007, the Ukrainian government posthumously awarded Shukhevych the title “Hero of Ukraine” on the anniversary of his 1950 death fighting Soviet forces, as was reported by the Edmonton Journal. In March of 2021, the Ukrainian city of Ternopil renamed its largest stadium in Shukhevych’s honor.
The statue, along with a memorial in St. Michael’s Cemetery to Ukrainian soldiers who fought in Nazi units, were vandalized in 2021 with red paint, according to the Edmonton Journal. The words “Actual Nazi” were smeared on the statue of Shukhevych, while the St. Michael’s memorial was covered in the words “Nazi Monument 14th Waffen SS.”
Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, the policy director at the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies told the Edmonton Journal is August 2021, “Over the years he was in charge of a number of different military units, some of which were collaborating with the Nazi regime. They were engaging in the genocide of the Jewish population as part of the program of the Holocaust. They also were committing massacres on Polish civilians.”
“The history on this is unequivocal,” she added. “There’s absolutely no doubt about the scope of this individual’s involvement in war crimes. It’s just beyond unacceptable that such a person should be celebrated in any way — symbolic or otherwise — in our country.”
