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 into a building after it had been removed.

The Laval and Pétain plaques and some 200 other such markers commemorate individuals and groups celebrated with ticker-tape parades beginning in 1886. On Oct. 22, 1931, Laval, then prime minister of France, received his parade on October 22, 1931, and Pétain, who had commanded the French army at the end of World War I, had his four days later.

Admittedly, neither man was infamous at that time. But by the time World War II ended, they were reviled as willing – in Laval’s case, enthusiastic – collaborators with Nazi Germany. Both were tried for and convicted of treason in 1945 and sentenced to death. Laval was executed. Pétain’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

A review of some highlights of Laval’s role in the perpetration of the Holocaust seems in order. He told German and other correspondents at a news conference in September 1942 that he intended to continue deporting alien Jews — that is, refugees and other Jews who did not hold French citizenship — from France. “No man and nothing,” he declared, “can sway me from my determination to rid France of alien Jews and send them back where they came from.” On another occasion that year, Laval referred to these foreign Jews as déchets, that is, garbage waste.

According to a New York Times article of September 6, 1942, “Pierre Laval’s anti-Semitic measures in unoccupied France had aroused violent opposition to his regime. Anti-Jewish measures in the unoccupied zone are said to have aroused ‘violent opposition’ at Nice, Marseille and Lyon, where the population formed protective cordons around intended victims, shouting abuse at the police.”

In October of that year, shortly before Vichy France severed diplomatic relations with the United States, Representative Emanuel Celler (D-NY) implored President Franklin D. Roosevelt to intervene with Laval to “to abide by rules of decency and the dictates of humanity” and “cease his depredations upon the Jewish people in unoccupied France.” In that letter, Celler referred to Laval as “the new Torquemada,” that is, as the equivalent of the notorious mastermind behind the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition.

All this was known in 2003 and 2004 when the Canyon of Heroes markers were installed, and yet the plaque honoring Laval was included nonetheless.

Pétain, whose marker continues to adorn Broadway, was no less of an antisemite and no less of a war criminal than Laval. He, too, is reviled in France today by everyone except for far right extremists and neo-fascist ideologues. In July 1942, he told members of his government that he considered the distinction between French and foreign Jews to be “fair and would be understood by opinion.”

Writing at the time of Pétain’s trial in 1945, the philosopher and novelist Albert Camus observed that “If Pétain is absolved, it would mean that all those who fought against the occupier [of France during World War II] were in the wrong. Those who were shot, tortured, deported would have suffered in vain.” The same sentiment holds true for turning a blind eye to the continued presence of Pétain’s marker in the Canyon of Heroes.

There can be no question, therefore, that neither Laval nor Pétain should be glorified in New York City or anywhere else, for that matter, and thus the efforts to remove the Pétain marker must continue in full force.

Moreover, there is precedent for doing so. In 2018, the de Blasio mayoral administration jettisoned a statue of J. Marion Sims, a 19th century genecologist who had conducted painful surgeries without anesthesia on enslaved women, from a Central Park pedestal at Fifth Avenue and 103rd Street.

The most immediate item on the agenda, however, has to be to prevent the Laval marker from ever being reinstalled on Broadway. Allowing this to happen would not only constitute an egregious travesty of justice but would violate the most basic tenets of human decency.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)