Ellin Bessner spoke about her book about over 17,000 jewish Canadians who fought in World War II. They faced a particularly brutal fate if captured by the Nazis and identified as Jewish.
Thoughts from Fiona Ferguson
John Palmer introduced our speaker Ellin Bressner who gave us a very heartfelt talk on the topic Canadian Jews, the military and World War II. It is a topic very dear to her heart because she became aware that she had had nine family members serving in the war, including a woman, but none had talked about it.
Ellen explained that many Jewish people fought in the war partly because of what was happening after November 9th 1938, the start of the holocaust. Rabbis encourage Jewish boys and young men to go to fight because they wanted the British allied forces to win because of the threat to Canada as Hitler knew there were many Jewish Canadians and where they lived . Many Jew were heroes 17,000 admitted their faith when they signed up although over 2000 did not because of the dangers of being discovered as Jews if they were captured. 40% of eligible Jews fought yet Canada has been very slow to recognize their contribution to the war effort.
At the time Canada was very anti-Semitic for example Prime Minister McKenzie King refused to allow a boatload of Jewish refugees to land so they returned to Europe where most perished. When they came back many Jewish people contributed to building Canada yet even today after the Hamas attack of October 7, there are still some anti-Semitic attacks.
Part of the presentation was particularly moving to Ron Macnaughton:
Ellin told a story of a Canadian Jewish soldier helping arrest the head of a death camp in 1945. This was recorded by a video camera. The image below shows his son was watching for the first time his father’s role at that event.
