Pétain was the head of Vichy France, the puppet state the Nazis set up after the fall of France in June 1940. Laval, as the Vichy prime minister, had an even more odious record. With his active assistance, tens of thousands of Jews in France were shipped off to Nazi labor and death camps. They included children younger than 16, whom not even the Nazis had demanded that he turn over. After the war, Pétain was sentenced to life in prison by his countrymen. Laval was executed.
If New York had erected statues or monuments to these monsters, I would agree that they should be removed. Instead — as with every other record of the 208 ticker-tape parades held along Lower Broadway — their names, installed in 2004, are inscribed in silver lettering on thin, dark bands the width of the sidewalk. The inscriptions in question read: “Oct. 22, 1931, Pierre Laval, premier of France” and “Oct. 26, 1931, Henri-Philippe Pétain, marshal of France.”
This stretch of Broadway has in recent years gained the nickname “the Canyon of Heroes,” which makes the inclusion of Pétain and Laval feel wrong to many people, and that is understandable. But the actual tributes to Pétain and Laval were the parades, which we cannot take back. The names along the sidewalk don’t inherently celebrate anyone. Instead, they hold us to account about whom we once considered heroes.
The first ever ticker-tape parade was held in 1886, to celebrate the dedication of the Statue of Liberty; the most recent was in 2021, for the health care professionals and essential workers who got us through the worst of the Covid pandemic. In between, the parades tended to reflect Americans’ varying preoccupations: lots of aviators and European leaders in the 1920s and ’30s; astronauts and the heads of the developing countries we were trying to cultivate during the Cold War. Most of the parades have been for champion sports teams in the years since.
At the time of their parades, Pétain and Laval had not yet revealed themselves to be traitors and war criminals. Pétain was still the “Lion of Verdun,” the general credited with saving France during the darkest moments of World War I. Laval was prime minister of a still unbowed France, soon to be named Time’s “Man of the Year” for his efforts to end the Great Depression.