Honouring Nazi impossible to overlook
Imagine your local government naming your local street after a long-dead Nazi naval officer in 2007.
Think of the locals who had to walk past the name of German naval commander Hans Langsdorff as they made their way along Langsdorff Avenue in the town of Ajax, right here in the Greater Toronto Area, every day — even on Holocaust Remembrance Day, every Jan. 27.
Picture these people speaking out a few years later, in 2020, against the memorializing of this powerful German commander who fought to perpetuate Adolf Hitler’s vision of Aryan purity — antisemitic, homophobic, anti-Roma and utterly white supremacist. You might not expect many politicians to persist in foisting Langsdorff’s legacy on the Jews of Ajax — or anyone else, then or now.
I still can’t fathom what Steve Parish was thinking when, as the town’s popular mayor 14 years ago, he publicly honoured the Nazi officer. Nor can I understand what was going through his mind in 2020, when he came out of retirement to defend the street name of a Nazi, over the objections of Ajax councillors and residents who finally succeeded in cleansing this stain.
Today, it all seems so bizarrely offensive, insensitive and inexplicable. So I asked for an explanation, given that Parish was just this month confirmed as the star candidate of the New Democratic Party in his home riding of Ajax.
I put the request to Ontario’s NDP on Friday morning, but Parish was unavailable. Instead, the party referred me to his previous public statements, and those of party leader Andrea Horwath, saying he meant no offence.
“There has been controversy over the renaming of Langsdorff Avenue in Ajax, and comments that I made at that time,” Parish stated. “This caused pain to some people in the Jewish community in Ajax and beyond in Ontario, and for that, I am profoundly and completely sorry and I offer my complete, unconditional and most sincere apology.”
As mayor in 2007 Parish hailed Langsdorff as “a remarkable leader.” His town took its name from the HMS Ajax, one of three Allied vessels involved in the fight against the Graf Spee commanded by the Nazi captain.
“It’s very shocking that the NDP had chosen Parish as a candidate in the first place, following his public display of support for having a street named after a Nazi warship captain,” noted the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center.
What’s peculiar about Parish is that he stuck to his guns for so many years. To be clear, no one wants to write Langsdorff out of history; people just don’t want to see his name up in lights.
Yet even in recent years, Parish persisted in honouring a Nazi’s memory when so many in society were redressing past problems and renaming problematic places — left, right and centre. Now the political left has a problem of its own making, right here in Ontario.
Note that this is not an inherited problem from a naming ceremony many decades ago. It was initiated by Parish in 2007, only to be repudiated by his successors in 2020, yet on both occasions he remained on the wrong side of history, obstinately and obtusely.
It was “an opportunity to right a wrong,” Rabbi Tzali Borenstein, of the Chabad Jewish Centre of Durham Region, said two years ago when council undid the damage after hearing entreaties from a Holocaust survivor. But when it comes to damage control, apparently Parish never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
The problem with his belated statement this month is that it’s conditionally “unconditional.” Parish doesn’t actually retract his wrong-headed views, which is his right, nor does he say whether he’s changed his mind after refusing his chance for a do-over in 2020.
Bernie Farber, chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network and former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said it didn’t go far enough because “an apology must address the wrongdoing and be directed at all” — regretting any “pain” among Jews is almost beside the point if Parish refuses to renounce what caused the pain.
“What about the street naming and his support of a full-fledged Nazi whom the street was named for?” Farber asked, adding the idea is indefensible. What Parish failed to say was, “I should have been more attuned to this matter. I was not. It was wrong and I apologize.”
Not so, according to Horwath. In her own statement, the NDP leader said Parish hit the mark:
“Steve Parish has apologized unreservedly and acknowledged the pain it caused for Jewish Ontarians. I recognize that his apology was without equivocation.”
A few other New Democrats were, however, prepared to say what Parish and Horwath couldn’t bring themselves to say: “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but naming streets after Nazis is an obvious and clear no,” wrote Beaches-East York MPP Rima Berns-McGown on Twitter. “There are no excuses.”
Jill Andrew, the New Democrat MPP for St. Paul’s tweeted, “There is no conceivable excuse, explanation or ‘honour’ to be had in naming any street after Nazis. Period.”
The president of the NDP’s Pickering-Uxbridge riding association, Emma Cunningham, also took to Twitter to announce her resignation in the wake of the Parish controversy. “Today I left the NDP,” wrote Cunningham, who describes herself on Twitter as “lefty. social justice warrior. 905er. jew.”
From her riding next door to Ajax, she could not see herself “campaigning alongside” Parish. Langsdorff had praised Hitler as a prophet, so why would Parish perpetuate his memory?
“It’s unacceptable for any party, particularly a progressive one, to run Parish as a candidate. I cannot stay in a space that is unwelcoming to Jews and shows no signs of action to improve safety.”
Her last word on the subject: “I no longer have a political home.”