There are hundreds of statues and monuments in the United States and around the world to people who abetted or took part in the murder of Jews and other minorities during the Holocaust. The Forward has, for the first time, documented them in this collection of articles. For a guide to each country’s memorials click here.
Simnica — Below, a statue of Xhem Hasa (1908–1945), aka Xhem Gostivari, commander of the Nazi-allied Balli Kombëtar, the Albanian nationalist paramilitary that occupied western Macedonia during WWII. The statue was unveiled in 2006.
Image by Sasha Uzunov
Statue of Xhem Hasa in Macedonia
Photo by Sasha Uzunov
Statue of Aqif Krosi Recani in Recani, Macedonia
Recani (Gostivar region) — A statue of Aqif Krosi Recani (1904–1946), another Balli Kombëtar commander, was unveiled in his hometown in 2015. In 2019, the United Macedonia Diaspora petitioned the U.S. State Department for aid in pressing Macedonia to remove the statues of Hasa and Recani. (Thanks to Sasha Uzunov for images and information on both statues.)
Nazi collaborator monuments around the world
Author
Lev Golinkin
Lev Golinkin is the author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka, Amazon’s Debut of the Month, a Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program selection, and winner of the Premio Salerno Libro d’Europa. Mr. Golinkin, a graduate of Boston College, came to the US as a child refugee from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov (now called Kharkiv) in 1990. His writing on the Ukraine crisis, Russia, the far right, and immigrant and refugee identity has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Boston Globe, Politico Europe, and Time.com, among others; he has been interviewed by MSNBC, NPR, ABC Radio, WSJ Live and HuffPost Live.