{"id":125681,"date":"2026-02-06T22:20:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T22:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/125681\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T22:20:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T22:20:07","slug":"nyc-removed-plaque-honoring-nazi-ally-on-broadway-and-jewish-groups-are-outraged-that-it-may-be-coming-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/125681\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC removed plaque\u00a0honoring Nazi ally on Broadway \u2014 and Jewish groups are outraged that it may be coming back"},"content":{"rendered":"

The city removed a plaque\u00a0honoring a convicted Nazi collaborator<\/a> on Broadway\u2019s Canyon of Heroes after deeming it a \u201ctripping hazard\u201d \u2014 and Jewish groups are outraged over a plan to return it, sources said Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like putting asbestos back in a building,\u201d Menachem Rosensaft, General Counsel Emeritus of the World Jewish Congress, told The Post.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s even worse than ignoring it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ticker tape parade marker honoring Pierre Laval \u2014 a former Prime Minister of France responsible for sending 70,000 jews from France to Nazi death camps during World War II\u00a0\u2014\u00a0was temporarily yanked in November due to safety concerns, according to Rosensaft and past reports.<\/p>\n

The ticker tape parade marker honoring Nazi collaborator Pierre Laval was removed because it was a \u201ctripping hazard.\u201d AP<\/p>\n

The plaque, along with 28 others that were temporarily removed due to shifting and freezing pavement, is set to be put back in place on lower Broadway after repairs.<\/p>\n

But Rosensaft and other advocates want the markers of Laval \u2014\u00a0along with that of Henri Philippe P\u00e9tain, a former high-ranking French military officer and Nazi collaborator \u2014\u00a0 removed once and for all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThese two are anything but heroes. They are the opposite: They are villains in the truest sense of the term,\u201d Rosensaft said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are knowingly complicit in the Holocaust,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1942 and 1943, they were responsible for detaining, rounding up and deporting over 70,000 jews from France to their deaths in Nazi death camps such as Auschwitz.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no ambiguity. After the war in 1945, they were tried and convicted as war criminals,\u201d said Rosensaft, who is also an adjunct professor at Cornell Law School.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister of France Pierre Laval is a convicted war criminal. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Their names were installed in the Canyon of Heroes in Manhattan in 1931, which honors esteemed champions, astronauts, and dignitaries, before they had openly collaborated with the Nazis.<\/p>\n

But both men were plunged into international disgrace after they collaborated with the Third Reich in sending thousands of Jews to their deaths while respectively serving as the top leader and prime minister of Vichy France following the 1941 German occupation.<\/p>\n

Mayor Bill De Blasio\u2019s administration at one point agreed to install extra plaques next to the mens\u2019\u00a0names to put their tributes in historical context,\u00a0Rosensaft said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But that never happened.<\/p>\n

Former high-ranking military official Henri Philippe Petain is honored in Manhattan\u2019s Canyon of Heroes, despite his collaboration with the Nazis. Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is beyond comprehension how two convicted war criminals who were knowingly complicit in the perpetration of the Holocaust could be honored on a sidewalk in New York City today,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a desecration of holocaust memory,\u201d Rosensaft said. <\/p>\n

\u201cSimply remove them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In November, the pavement around the Laval marker popped up, rendering it a \u201ctripping hazard,\u201d\u00a0Andrew Breslau of the Alliance for Downtown told the New York Times<\/a>, which was first to report its removal.<\/p>\n

Petain and Laval In The Park Of The Sevigne Pavillion in Vichy in 1942. Keystone-France\/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images<\/p>\n

A total of\u00a025 more markers had to be taken out due to damage from recent snowstorms, which \u201creally did a number on sidewalks,\u201d\u00a0 Breslau said. <\/p>\n

Three more were removed in 2025 because of sidewalk or construction.<\/p>\n

Laval was the French prime minister at the time of the Oct. 22, 1931, ticker tape parade in\u00a0Manhattan. <\/p>\n

He was later executed for his war crimes in 1945.<\/p>\n

P\u00e9tain, meanwhile, died in prison in 1951, twenty years after his own ticker tape parade.<\/p>\n

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine also spoke out<\/a> in support of removing their plaques in 2023, saying, \u201cNazi collaborators are simply beyond the pale.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A City Hall spokesperson didn\u2019t immediately respond to inquiries from The Post about the issue Friday.<\/p>\n

A rep for the Alliance for Downtown didn\u2019t return a request for comment.<\/p>\n

-Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The city removed a plaque\u00a0honoring a convicted Nazi collaborator on Broadway\u2019s Canyon of Heroes after deeming it a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[881,75,57,30738,9,56,63,65,64,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-125681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-history","9":"tag-manhattan","10":"tag-metro","11":"tag-nazis","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-nyc-headlines","16":"tag-nyc-news","17":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}