Mind Picker: None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948

The Jews of Europe were not so much trapped in a whirlwind of systemic murder as they were abandoned to it. The Nazis planned and executed the Holocaust, but it was made possible by an indifference to the suffering of the victims that sometimes bordered on contempt.

What a lot of hard facts there are in None Is Too Many. As a nation of immigrants, Canada might have had our own Statue of Liberty; some beacon of hope announcing, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"…unless we're talking about Jews. As early as 1933, argue Irving Abella and Harold Troper, European Jews could see what was in the air, and desperately reaching out to Canadian relatives, begged them to be their sponsors. But Immigration Canada had a nifty Catch-22 set in place (ostensibly to protect the Canadian workforce during the Depression): Jews could only apply to immigrate as farmers -- to populate the vast empty spaces in the Prairies -- but even if they had the assets and the experience to buy and operate farms, their applications were rejected because everyone knows that Jews don't farm and would just migrate to Toronto and Montreal like the rest of them and upset racial balance. This policy was in place as Hitler's power grew, as the Jews were ghettoized, outlasting kristallnacht and even the eyewitness reports coming back from Auschwitz and Treblinka.

Prime Minister Mackenzie King seemed sympathetic throughout these years, but the virulent anti-Semitism of what the authors refer to as the "unholy triumvirate" of the Immigration Branch, the Cabinet, and External Affairs used bureaucratic red-tape to prevent refugees in general, and Jews in particular, from finding protection here throughout WWII. In Quebec, Maurice Duplessis used a mere proposal to admit some hundreds of refugees into Canada to inflame the province into electing his isolationist government into power (plus ça change…) Frantic Canadian Jews formed lobbying groups, trying to stir up public sympathy, but were repeatedly told that keeping refugees out was for their own protection; to shield them from the anti-Semitism of the Gentile masses. They were told to remain quiet and patient, to trust in the working of the government, and being powerless, they did.

Even after the war was over, as hundreds of thousands of Displaced Persons languished in holding camps, the Canadian government dragged its feet over changing its immigration policies. Eventually, C. D. Howe persuaded Cabinet that an economic boom was imminent if Canada could attract a larger workforce, and selection committees were sent to Europe to find "the right kinds" of immigrants. Despite the special horrors that the Jews had been subjected to, Canada didn't prefer them as refugees since everyone knows the men aren't fit for mining or lumber work (the main labour force needs) and the women would likely refuse to work as domestics or nurses (despite having done that work previously in Europe). Even when the Jewish aid groups lobbied to allow in skilled tailors and furriers (guaranteeing them employment and offering to pay all processing and transportation costs) the government only agreed to a strict quota, not to exceed 50% Jewish. This process dragged on until Britain handed Palestine over to the United Nations and the state of Israel was created. Jewish interest in immigrating to Canada faded, and Canada patted itself on the back, having admitted a whopping 8000 Jews from 1933-48.

This book has a slightly angry tone -- which might have rubbed off on me -- but it's a lot to be angry about, and especially because this isn't the history that we're taught in school. By the end, the authors have done a good job of explaining the prevailing attitudes and customs that could allow for this official indifference, and point out only three villains -- Thomas Crerar (for incompetence more than malice), Frederick Charles Blair, and Vincent Massey -- but, as it turns out, it only took these three obstructionists to condemn untold numbers of Jews to their fates.

It was also interesting to learn here that a manuscript copy of this book was given to Joe Clark's government in 1979 and helped to convince them to admit 50000 "Boat People" from Vietnam.

This is the second book in my Lit class, and after the old hippy went on an anti-Israeli rant at the introductory meeting, and with the current (and polarizing) Israeli-Hamas conflict, I was afeared of being dragged into an unpleasant debate at this week's class -- but silver ponytail, the poet, and quite a few others didn't show up, and curiously, Israel wasn't discussed at all.

I suppose it might have been more interesting if the opinionated ones had shown up because in a book-club-type class like this, the quality of the experience depends entirely on the people talking. After reading this book, the discussion was mostly, "But why couldn't Canada have done more?" and "Was Canada really that racist?" Our Professor is not a history expert, didn't have a lot of facts, and even when the question was, "Did Robertson Davies really never write an editorial in support of the Jews or against the Nazis?", she could only reply, "It would be interesting for someone to go through the old records to find out, but I don't think he ever did." That may end up being true, but since she assembled these books for us under the theme of "the perils of patronage", I would have thought she'd have those answers anyway (if the point is to prove that Davies wouldn't rock the boat with the known anti-Semite Vincent Massey and then was rewarded with the Mastership of Massey College).

The comment the Prof most responded to was, "I remember back then that there were big names -- the Masseys, the Eatons, the Thomsons -- and even though they weren't in government, the common people thought that everything would be okay because these important people were going to take care of everything." The Prof then went on a tangent about Ideology and who gets to decide what the common thoughts are -- and if anti-Semites were considered the "important people", then their beliefs became the common ideology with reinforcing signals; the "ideological hails". Her example: It had long been believed that there are only two genders, male and female. When someone has a baby, what's the first thing you ask? Before you even count toes and fingers, it's "is it a boy or a girl?", right? But now scientists know that there are an infinite number of genders between male and female. And what are the ideological hails? How about when you go to a movie or a concert and you need to use the washroom? How do you know which one to use? You look for either a male or a female sign -- the ideological hail -- and you have it reinforced over and over that it's an either/or. But what if your bits don't look like mine? Or what if you have bits of both genders? Why does anyone need to sort themselves like this? It's just ideology.

Scientists now know that there are an infinite number of genders between male and female? Says who? Talk about top-down ideology -- this is such progressive liberal University jibber-jabber and it was hard for me to neither snort with incredulity or shake my head with dismay: this is who is educating the kiddos. She also had a tangent about bias in news reporting, and after giving a decent example from a small town newspaper, she concluded with, "That's why you should always get your news from the CBC. The mothership!" I had to look down at my hands so that the Prof couldn't see my gaping mouth and bulging eyes -- the CBC as an example of unbiased reporting indeed!

I had my hand up to make a point, but I was never called on, and as the others kept shouting out, I eventually gave up. I was looking to make a devil's advocate-type statement: Perhaps it wasn't exactly anti-Semitism that kept our borders closed. As this book stated, the population of Canada leading up to WWII was 8 million and they were suffering the hunger and joblessness of the Depression. As 6 million Jews were eventually murdered in the Holocaust, how could we have possibly absorbed them all? With what resources? And how would that have changed the nature of our English/French/Christian country? As several of the officials in None Is Too Many complained that Jews are notoriously pushy -- that they had repeatedly used every immigration concession as a wedge to bend and break the rules and bring in more people than agreed to (a fact also admitted to by the Jewish aid groups) -- they must have been honestly afraid of opening the dam. Now, this was totally devil's advocate -- of course I believe we should have done more and we failed the Jewish people utterly -- but I would have liked to have talked about it (certainly more than the gender stuff). In the introductory class, the Prof talked about refugees and sneered at the current (Conservative) government's toughened stance on admitting them -- and I would have liked to have talked about that: I would have liked to have gotten into talking about the countries like France and Holland that have large and restless Muslim populations, and how having allowed them to immigrate as refugees in large numbers, these countries are losing their former cultural dominance. What are the limits of compassion? Especially when talking about groups that don't wish to assimilate (which was another point made by officials about Jews in this book, and which would seem to be the case with some Muslims). I wanted to make the point that a huge percentage of the world lives in conditions much worse than we have it here -- people are starving and have no economic opportunities; people are being hunted down for their beliefs -- but how could we possible bring them to Canada in their millions? We couldn't afford it and we couldn't risk losing the essential nature of our liberal democracy. But...this was the discussion we didn't have, and I found the one we did have dull.

All these thoughts about refugees -- and specifically the Boat People let in by Joe Clark's government as a result of None Is Too Many -- reminds me of another story, but since this is too long already, I'm going to put it back on a related novel, All the Broken Things.