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During the 12-year control of Germany by the Nazi regime, only about 5,000 Jewish refugees were allowed to enter Canada. The racist policies of the true north, strong and free, were in keeping with the words of Prime Minister Mackenzie-King in 1938: "We must nevertheless seek to keep this part of the Continent free from unrest and from too great an inter-mixture of foreign strains of blood... I fear we would have riots if we agreed to a policy that admitted numbers of Jews."
On June 7, 1939, 907 Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi Germany aboard the MS St. Louis were denied entry to Canada, having been previously denied entry to Cuba, other Latin American countries and the United States.
Canadian school children for many decades were never told that Canada was arguably the least generous and most restrictive western state in terms of admitting and welcoming Jews fleeing the extermination policies of Nazi Germany, before, during and soon after World War II. Canada's racist policies were made clear in Irving Abella and Harold Troper's None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933--1948.
Despite Canada's overtly anti-Semitic policies, according to researcher Adara Goldberg, "Approximately 17,000 Jews -- roughly one-fifth of the country's Jewish male population -- enlisted in the Canadian armed forces. This figure was disproportionately higher than any other minority ethnic group. Of those who served, 421 Canadian Jewish personnel died in service; 1,971 received military awards."
To trace the influx of 35,000 Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution who came to Canada in the decade after that war, Adara Goldberg, when she was Education Director at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, published Holocaust Survivors in Canada: Exclusion, Inclusion, Transformation, 1947-1955 (University of Manitoba Press 2015). Based on research conducted at Holocaust survivors' kitchen tables as well as in traditional archives, Goldberg's groundbreaking analysis of resettlement and integration experiences examines how Canadian officials and established Jewish communities coped with major difficulties in order to incorporate the post-genocide migrants. This book was largely based on Goldberg's Ph.D dissertation at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts where Goldberg received her Ph.D from the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. It received the Marsid Foundation Prize for Holocaust literature at the first Western Canada Jewish Book Awards held in Vancouver.
Goldberg has summarized, "In the years before the Second World War, Jews faced limits on enrolment in educational institutions. Their participation in various fields, such as medicine and law, was also restricted. They were not allowed access to some property and vacation sites. Signs that read "Gentiles Only" and "No Jews or Dogs Allowed" were posted well into the 1930s and 1940s. During this time, discriminatory immigration policies denied sponsorship requests to nearly all Jewish applicants. Canadians overwhelmingly supported government policy that classified Jews as foreigners who could not assimilate. They were seen as posing potential threats to the health of the nation.
Jews were especially vulnerable in Quebec where Roman Catholic priest Lionel Groulz, the so-called "father of French Canadian nationalism," espoused racist and anti-refugee rhetoric. He did so from the pulpit, on the radio, and in such journals as L'Action Nationale and Le Goglu. Meanwhile, journalist and Nazi sympathizer Adrien Arcand founded the anti-communist and anti-Jewish Parti National Social Chretien (Christian National Socialist Party) and later led the National Unity Party of Canada, an offshoot of anti-Semitic fascist groups that were organized in many towns and cities across the country.
"During the Great Depression in Alberta," Goldberg writes, "the governing Social Credit Party spread anti-Semitic beliefs through radio broadcasts and racist literature. Chief among these was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was a fabricated text first published in Russia in 1905. It claimed to outline a plan for Jewish world domination." So-called "swastika clubs" in Ontario were formed mainly to intimidate Jews and keep them from visiting the city's public beaches on the shore of Lake Ontario. On the night of August 16,1933, a six-hour, violent street brawl known as the Christie Pits riots took place on the streets of Toronto between swastika-brandishing Anglo Protestants and Jewish and Italian Catholic immigrants.
Having held fellowships at Stockton University and Hebrew University, Goldberg left the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre to become the 2016-17 Azrieli International Post-Doctoral Fellow in Israel, then became Director of New Jersey's Kean's Holocaust Resource Center/Council on Global Education and Citizenship in 2018. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Yad Vashem Working Group on Child Holocaust Survivors and the Canadian advisory committee for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
BOOKS:
Anne Frank: A History for Today. School Program Teachers Guide (VHEC 2014)
Holocaust Survivors in Canada: Exclusion, Inclusion, Transformation, 1947-1955 (University of Manitoba Press 2015) $24.95 978-0-88755-776-7
[BELOW: Only known photo of the Christie Pits riot in Toronto, fomented by Swastika Clubs, 1933]
On June 7, 1939, 907 Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi Germany aboard the MS St. Louis were denied entry to Canada, having been previously denied entry to Cuba, other Latin American countries and the United States.
Canadian school children for many decades were never told that Canada was arguably the least generous and most restrictive western state in terms of admitting and welcoming Jews fleeing the extermination policies of Nazi Germany, before, during and soon after World War II. Canada's racist policies were made clear in Irving Abella and Harold Troper's None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933--1948.
Despite Canada's overtly anti-Semitic policies, according to researcher Adara Goldberg, "Approximately 17,000 Jews -- roughly one-fifth of the country's Jewish male population -- enlisted in the Canadian armed forces. This figure was disproportionately higher than any other minority ethnic group. Of those who served, 421 Canadian Jewish personnel died in service; 1,971 received military awards."
To trace the influx of 35,000 Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution who came to Canada in the decade after that war, Adara Goldberg, when she was Education Director at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, published Holocaust Survivors in Canada: Exclusion, Inclusion, Transformation, 1947-1955 (University of Manitoba Press 2015). Based on research conducted at Holocaust survivors' kitchen tables as well as in traditional archives, Goldberg's groundbreaking analysis of resettlement and integration experiences examines how Canadian officials and established Jewish communities coped with major difficulties in order to incorporate the post-genocide migrants. This book was largely based on Goldberg's Ph.D dissertation at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts where Goldberg received her Ph.D from the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. It received the Marsid Foundation Prize for Holocaust literature at the first Western Canada Jewish Book Awards held in Vancouver.
Goldberg has summarized, "In the years before the Second World War, Jews faced limits on enrolment in educational institutions. Their participation in various fields, such as medicine and law, was also restricted. They were not allowed access to some property and vacation sites. Signs that read "Gentiles Only" and "No Jews or Dogs Allowed" were posted well into the 1930s and 1940s. During this time, discriminatory immigration policies denied sponsorship requests to nearly all Jewish applicants. Canadians overwhelmingly supported government policy that classified Jews as foreigners who could not assimilate. They were seen as posing potential threats to the health of the nation.
Jews were especially vulnerable in Quebec where Roman Catholic priest Lionel Groulz, the so-called "father of French Canadian nationalism," espoused racist and anti-refugee rhetoric. He did so from the pulpit, on the radio, and in such journals as L'Action Nationale and Le Goglu. Meanwhile, journalist and Nazi sympathizer Adrien Arcand founded the anti-communist and anti-Jewish Parti National Social Chretien (Christian National Socialist Party) and later led the National Unity Party of Canada, an offshoot of anti-Semitic fascist groups that were organized in many towns and cities across the country.
"During the Great Depression in Alberta," Goldberg writes, "the governing Social Credit Party spread anti-Semitic beliefs through radio broadcasts and racist literature. Chief among these was The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was a fabricated text first published in Russia in 1905. It claimed to outline a plan for Jewish world domination." So-called "swastika clubs" in Ontario were formed mainly to intimidate Jews and keep them from visiting the city's public beaches on the shore of Lake Ontario. On the night of August 16,1933, a six-hour, violent street brawl known as the Christie Pits riots took place on the streets of Toronto between swastika-brandishing Anglo Protestants and Jewish and Italian Catholic immigrants.
Having held fellowships at Stockton University and Hebrew University, Goldberg left the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre to become the 2016-17 Azrieli International Post-Doctoral Fellow in Israel, then became Director of New Jersey's Kean's Holocaust Resource Center/Council on Global Education and Citizenship in 2018. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Yad Vashem Working Group on Child Holocaust Survivors and the Canadian advisory committee for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
BOOKS:
Anne Frank: A History for Today. School Program Teachers Guide (VHEC 2014)
Holocaust Survivors in Canada: Exclusion, Inclusion, Transformation, 1947-1955 (University of Manitoba Press 2015) $24.95 978-0-88755-776-7
[BELOW: Only known photo of the Christie Pits riot in Toronto, fomented by Swastika Clubs, 1933]
