Pierre Laval, the prime minister of the Nazi-collaborationist French government based in Vichy during most of World War II, was evil incarnate. He was not just a bad man or your run-of-the-mill war criminal, of whom there are many. He did far more than just aiding and abetting the Hitlerite forces in carrying out what is euphemistically referred to as the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” He was responsible for the rounding up of tens of thousands of Jews throughout France and deporting them to the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were brutally murdered.

And yet, a granite marker honoring him was embedded on Broadway in lower Manhattan as part of a so-called “Canyon of Heroes” from 2004 until this past November when it was “temporarily” removed for sidewalk repairs because, according to a bureaucrat at the ​Alliance for Downtown New York named Andrew Breslau, the pavement had popped up causing the marker to become a “tripping hazard.”

Breslau acknowledges that Laval together with Philippe Pétain, the head of state of Vichy France whose marker continues to adorn Broadway, were “handmaidens to the Holocaust,” and yet the Alliance fully expects the Laval plaque to be put back once the sidewalk is rendered safe.

Doing so would be the equivalent of putting asbestos back........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)