Nazi streets found in Canada
German corporation successfully petitioned London, Ontario to name street after Nazi tycoon who used slave labor
Left: Max Brose in Nazi uniform (YouTube). Right: Nazi march, Coburg, 1933 (Coburg City Archives). Image by Lev Golinkin
By Lev Golinkin July 24, 2025
This year marks the 4th anniversary of the Forward’s Nazi Collaborators Monuments Project, an investigation chronicling monuments and honors to Nazis and their collaborators all over the globe. In the two years since our last update, several monuments highlighted by the project have been taken down in the United States and Canada; however, new ones have been discovered as well.
Nazi streets and scholarships in Canada: Wehrwirtschaftsführer Max Brose
London, Ontario, a city of over 420,000, is home to Max Brose Drive, named for German industrialist Max Brose.
Brose’s automotive factory manufactured arms for the Third Reich; Brose, a member of the Nazi Party, was recognized for his importance to Nazi Germany by receiving the title Wehrwirtschaftsführer (industry leader). His company, Brose Fahrzeugteile, was given slave labor, including from prisoners of war.
Today, Brose Fahrzeugteile is engaging in efforts to whitewash its founder. The history section of the company’s website insists Brose was an “entrepreneur with social responsibility,” whose slaves were “treated better than the average.”
Brose’s Nazi past came to the forefront during a 2022 scandal surrounding Julia Stoschek, billionaire art collector and Brose’s great-granddaughter. “While numerous German companies … have openly grappled with their involvement with the Nazi regime, the Stoschek family has been accused of sweeping its history under the rug,” noted The New York Times.
Indeed, in 2015, Germany’s main Jewish organization protested when the city of Coburg, home of Brose’s global headquarters, named a street for Brose. The street was named for him regardless.
Canada’s Max Brose Drive is one of seven Max Brose streets from Brazil to Slovakia. All are near factories or other property owned by Brose Fahrzeugteile.
Last September, a London city spokesperson confirmed, via email, that the “name change to Max Brose Drive took place in 2004 and was initiated by Brose Canada Inc. as part of their construction of a new manufacturing facility in London.”
The spokesperson added that “at the time, name changes were undertaken with only a cursory review. We can confirm City staff were not aware of a connection between Max Brose and the Nazi party [sic] when the street was renamed.”
When asked, the city did not provide an answer on whether any changes have been made between last September and now.
Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center, Canada’s major Jewish advocacy group, didn’t mince words: “It’s unacceptable that there are streets anywhere in Canada named after Nazis,” said Jaime Kirzner-Roberts, Senior Director for Policy and Advocacy, via email.
“What a slap in the face to our veterans and to the 45,000 Canadians who gave their lives to stop the spread of fascism in Europe. What an egregious insult to our Holocaust survivors and Jewish community. The glorification of Nazis should have absolutely no place anywhere in our country.”
When reached for comment, via email, a Brose spokesperson directed the Forward to the history section of the company’s website.
A fighter for the Waffen-SS
Meanwhile, Edmonton has a street honoring Peter Savaryn, a veteran of SS Galizien, a Ukrainian division in the Waffen-SS, which was the military arm of the Nazi Party. In 2023, the Forward broke the news of Canada’s Governor General (the representative of the British Crown) apologizing for medals that had been previously awarded to Savaryn.
Edmonton’s Savaryn Drive doesn’t have “Peter” in the name. However, an agenda from a 2007 meeting of Edmonton’s street naming commission lists the honoree as Peter Savaryn, with a biography that matches the SS soldier.
The city of Edmonton confirmed the street was named after Savaryn “in 2007 before the City was aware of Peter Savaryn’s history during the Second World War. The name was chosen at the time based on Savaryn’s work of more than 60 years to preserve the Ukrainian language and culture in Canada as Edmonton has a very rich Ukrainian heritage and history.”
Savaryn is one of nearly a dozen SS Galizien fighters honored with endowments in the University of Alberta’s Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. In 2023, the school pledged to return money from a scholarship for one veteran, Yaroslav Hunka, and investigate the other endowments.
When reached for comment a year and a half later, the school said, via email, that the money has been given back to Hunka’s family but did not provide a yes-or-no answer when asked whether it got rid of its other Nazi scholarships.
SS honors in America
Two Nazi collaborator honors in New Jersey have been added to the project. The first is SS Galizien’s divisional insignia on a monument celebrating “Fighters for Ukrainian Freedom” in a cemetery owned by Saint Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Memorial Church in South Bound Brook. It was originally reported on by researcher Moss Robeson on X.
In 2023, a similar monument in Philadelphia was boarded up following a Forward investigation.
The nearby city of New Brunswick has a scout lodge named after Hungarian Prime Minister Pál Teleki, who had championed and enacted numerous antisemitic laws stripping his country’s Jews of their rights, a key prelude on the road to genocide; around 550,000 Hungarian Jews were exterminated during the Holocaust.
New country spotlight: Finland
Readers have continued contacting the Forward with streets and monuments that had been previously overlooked. One such case is Finland’s monuments to the nation’s SS volunteers. Several years ago, research by Dr. André Swanström resulted in a report concluding it was “very likely” these soldiers murdered Jews.
The inclusion of Finland as well as Brazil, Mexico and Poland brings the project to a total of 34 countries on five continents.
We’ve also seen Nazi honors removed: In addition to Philadelphia, a second SS Galizien monument in a Toronto suburb was taken down in 2024, while NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida recently renamed a conference facility that honored an SS officer.
You can read prior articles about Nazi monuments and browse through our country-by-country lists of them here. If you know of statues, streets or other items honoring collaborators that are not listed on our site, please email [email protected], subject line: Nazi monument project.
