Nazi Collaborator's Name Will Remain On Broadway Sidewalk

FINANCIAL DISTRICT, NY — A granite strip bearing the name of a Nazi collaborator will stay on a New York City sidewalk even after Mayor Bill de Blasio promised that the name would be one of the first "symbols of hate" to be erased in a citywide purge.

Nazi Philippe Pétain will keep his spot on a sidewalk on Broadway, the city announced on Friday.

The decision comes from a commission launched by de Blasio to review "symbols of hate" on city property, the mayor said in August. On Friday, the commission released its findings, concluding that just one city monument should be removed entirely.

The monuments commission called for the Central Park statue of J. Marion Sims to be removed and relocated to Green-Wood Cemetery. Sims, who was once regarded as the "father of gynecology," is today reviled as a physician who forcefully submitted black women, many of them slaves, to experimentation that they did not consent to and without using anesthesia, according to the historian Dr. Graham J. Barker-Benfield and others.

The commission said in its report that the other monuments and symbols it considered, including Pétain's plaque, should remain in place with additional signage and context about their history.

Pétain's plaque was the only city monument or marker singled out by de Blasio as one ready for immediate removal. In a tweet in August, de Blasio said that the "commemoration for Nazi collaborator Philippe Pétain in the Canyon of Heroes will be one of the first we remove."

Pétain, a Nazi collaborator in France during World War II, was sentenced to life in prison after the war for his work leading the Vichy government.

He also helped to handcraft an anti-Semitic law that barred all Jews in the country from many public sector jobs and other parts of society, according to historian Serge Klarsfeld.

Pétain's name is on a Broadway sidewalk near Morris Street. He is part of the so-called "Canyon of Heroes," which features the names of the more than 200 people or groups who were honored with a ticker-tape parade by New York City. Pétain was greeted with cheering crowds when he visited New York City in October 1931 – before he worked alongside the Nazis.

The project to add the names of honorees to the streets began in 2003 and was largely completed by 2004.

The commission said in its report that because the markers indicate a historic parade route, they should either all be removed or all remain in place.

"Ultimately, a majority of the Commission members feel that while the ticker-tape parades were honorific, the markers themselves tell this history without a clear element of celebration—in contrast with the clearly celebratory intent of the other monuments the Commission discussed," the commission wrote in its report.

Some commission members did recommend removing all 206 markers completely, the report said.

The commission recommended additional signage and context for Pétain's plaque, along with removing all references to the name "Canyon of Heroes."

The mayor launched the commission in August in the wake of violent rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia. Neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups protested the removal of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a park there. The hate groups' protests grew violent and counter-protester Heather Heyer was killed when James Alex Fields allegedly drove his car into a group of anti-racist demonstrators.

Image credit: Ciara McCarthy / Patch