History | Politics | Racism

Canada Should Remove Its Nazi Monuments For Good

Speaking as a Canadian, I’m ashamed these things exist on our soil

That wooden surface was where the prisoners were forced to sleep. | Photo by Sonia Dauer on Unsplash

I have written in the past about my visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

It’s a painful experience, but it’s one that I highly encourage everyone to seek out. Such memorials exist all around the world, and they’re an incredible reminder of how horrible human beings can truly be to one another.

It’s hard to look at the images and read the horrible stories. Do it anyway.

When you take the time to immerse yourself in the history of the Holocaust, you develop a seething disgust towards those who participated in it. It takes root in you, and it flexes its claws whenever you see denial or minimization of the facts.

As you can imagine, it’s hard to square with the idea that my own country is one of those that keeps the denial of the atrocities alive.

In Canada, there are monuments to volunteer Nazi soldiers. The most well-known of these is the infamous Oakville cenotaph that commemorates the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.

Recently, after years of being defaced and vandalized, after years of protests, it…