Montreal to strike name of alleged Nazi sympathizer Alexis Carrel from local map

Dr. Alexis Carrel, surgical and medical director, is shown in a July 29,1940 file photo. The City of Montreal will remove the name of a Nobel Prize-winning doctor from a street and a park because he was an alleged Nazi sympathizer. Mayor Denis Coderre announced today that Carrel’s name would be stricken from the Montreal landscape after provincial and local politicians asked it be done. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP.

MONTREAL — The City of Montreal will remove the name of a Nobel Prize-winning doctor from a street and a park because he was an alleged Nazi sympathizer.

Mayor Denis Coderre announced today that Alexis Carrel’s name would be stricken from the Montreal landscape after provincial and local politicians asked it be done.

Carrel, a French surgeon and biologist, won the Nobel Prize in 1912 but became the subject of controversy for his support of eugenics and the Nazi regime.

Coderre’s move follows one by elected officials in Gatineau, Que., which removed Carrel’s name from a street last year.

Provincial Liberal politician David Birnbaum recently asked for the name to be removed from two other Montreal suburbs.

The Canadian Press