Sunday, June 3, 2018

The Shameful Record of the Church and the Holocaust in Canada

From Canada-

As a reminder of that period, I reread the book None Is Too Many by Irving Abella and Harold Troper. First published in 1983, it documents efforts by the Canadian Civil Service to bar entry to European Jewish refugees trying to save themselves from the Holocaust.
The book’s title, a reply by an unnamed bureaucrat to the question of how many Jews should be admitted to Canada after World War II, is no exaggeration. Few Jewish refugees were admitted to Canada during the immediate post-war period (1945-1948) and only 500 were admitted from 1939-1945, when the search for sanctuary was most desperate.
Abella and Troper make it clear that the civil servants involved were complying with the wishes of the political establishment, from Prime Minister Mackenzie King on down. Due to widespread antisemitism, there were no votes on admitting Jewish refugees to Canada and the frantic efforts of the leaders of the 175,000 member Jewish community were useless, even in exceptional cases related to family reunification or when affluent applicants offered to transfer substantial assets to Canada.
 More here-

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