By Elena Kingsbury (Senior FSWC Educator)

Strand A3.7- Describe significant events or developments in the history of Jewish communities in Canada, including some of the ways they have contributed to Canada. (This includes the topic of experiences and contributions of Jewish communities and the impact of antisemitism on these communities).

Each school year, Ally Week provides an excellent opportunity to create lessons that empower students to stand up for victims of intolerance and against hate in its many different forms. When we turn to the Holocaust, one of the overarching messages that many scholars and educators emphasize is the lack of allyship shown at the time to Europe’s doomed Jewish communities both from within Europe itself and beyond. In Canada, immigration policies shaped by xenophobia and outright antisemitism resulted in less than 5,000 Jews being allowed to enter Canada between 1933 and 1945.

In sharp contrast to this shameful inaction at the national level, some Canadians did stand up against Nazism and spoke out on behalf of Jews being persecuted in Nazi-occupied Europe. Not surprisingly, the majority of those who stood up were Jews. In the early 1930s, Canada’s Jewish population numbered nearly 170,000.

Jewish newspapers published impassioned editorials, strongly condemning the devastating impact of Nazi race laws on German, Austrian and Czechoslovakian Jews. They also criticized the Canadian government, denouncing their inaction in challenging increasingly oppressive laws against Jews in these countries. Winnipeg Jews spearheaded boycotts against Germany. Jews across the country participated in anti-Nazi rallies. They also lobbied Parliament to allow sponsorship of relatives living under fascist regimes. Women’s groups and mutual aid societies mounted campaigns to deliver money, food and resources to oppressed family and friends in Europe. The Jewish Immigrant Aid Society, charged with immigrant resettlement, helped with sponsorship applications.

While Canadian Jewish individuals helped motivate the Canadian government to take action, albeit quite limited to support Jewish refugees during this time, too few non-Jewish Canadians demonstrated similar allyship. Such allyship didn’t stop in 1945. In the post-war period, Jewish Canadians played a critical role in relief efforts for displaced persons and Holocaust survivors in Europe, and sponsored thousands of survivors to start new lives in Canada.

Further Reading:

The Holocaust, Canadian Jews, and Canada’s “Good War” Jewish Canadian Studies https://cjs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cjs/article/download/39962/36169/49380\

Jewish Canadian Service in the Second World War https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/people-and-stories/jewish-canadian-service

Canada and the Holocaust https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/holocaust