This set of History Documents invites students to determine whether or not the Canadian government was justified in limiting Jewish immigration and refugees during the 1930s and 1940s after examining a variety of primary and secondary sources, including newspaper articles, letters-to-the-editors, personal diaries, websites and books.
#1 Order-in-council, P.C. 695
(Excerpt from an order-in-council passed by the Canadian parliament on March 21, 1931, set the closed-door immigration policy that would stand for over a decade.)
From and after the 18th March, 1931, and until otherwise ordered, the landing in Canada of immigrants of all classes and occupations, is hereby prohibited, except as hereafter provided:
#2 Letter by Frederick Blair
(Excerpt from a letter written in 1938 by Frederick Blair, the Director of Immigration of the Department of Mines and Resources from 1936 to 1944, to F. Maclure Scalders, former Commissioner of the Saskatoon Board of Trade.)
To F. Maclure Scalders,
I often think that instead of persecution it would be far better if we more often told (Jews) frankly why many of them are unpopular .....If they would divest (rid) themselves of certain of their habits I am sure they could be just as popular in Canada as our Scandinavians.
(Signed)
Frederick Blair
Director of Immigration
Department of Mines and Resources, 1938
- "Open hearts, closed doors teachers guide," Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre
#3 Personal Diary of Mackenzie King
(Excerpt from Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King's diary from Tuesday, March 29, 1938 in which he outlines his views on admitting Jewish refugees.)
Tuesday, March 29, 1938
A very difficult question has presented itself .....in admitting refugees from Austria, Germany, etc. That means, in a word, admitting numbers of Jews. My own feeling is that nothing is to be gained by creating an internal problem in an effort to meet an international one .....We must nevertheless seek to keep this continent free from unrest and from too great an intermixture of foreign strains of blood .....I fear I would have riots if we agreed to a policy that admitted numbers of Jews.
- "The diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, March 29, 1938," Library and Archives Canada
#4 Letter to the editor
(Excerpt from a letter to the editor written by Wilfred Grimes in the July 5, 1938 edition of the Vancouver Sun.)
Vancouver Sun
July 5, 1938
Undoubtedly the Jew is a miracle among the nations.
No people in the history of the world has undergone such persecution. They have, as a nation, been scattered throughout the world, suffered terrible privations [lacking the essentials for survival], been scourged [punished] and ravaged in every shape and form, yet the Jew lives on, and they remain a separate people .....
Is it not a fact that the Jew always brings prosperity to the country where he is allowed to live in peace? Is not their literature the finest in the world? .....
The nation or power that persecutes the Jew today will surely go the way the former nations and empires have gone. They will only be a memory, and that for a very short time, while the poor, persecuted Jew will live on.
-Wilfred Grimes
-Wilfred Grimes, "The Jew," Letter to the Editor, Vancouver Sun, 5 July 1938, p.4
#5 Sol Messinger aboard the M.S. St. Louis
(Excerpt from a 2011 newspaper article about Sol Messinger, who along with his parents, were Jewish refugees aboard the M.S. St. Louis that was turned away from Canada in 1939. Messinger and his family were later accepted as refugees in Belgium and survived the Holocaust.)
"Nobody wanted us," Dr. Messinger, now 78 and a retired physician in Buffalo, N.Y. said in an interview with the National Post. "We were Jews, we were expendable .....It was terrible -terrible, terrible -of Canada and the United States, of all countries, to not let us in."
Dr. Messinger said the German crew had treated the passengers "as human beings," even offering them "big breakfasts, and ice cream with mini umbrellas pegged in the scoop." Canada, though, would offer the family nothing.
-Katherine Blaze Carlson, "'None is too many' memorial for Jews turned away from Canada 1939," The National Post, 17 January 2011
#6 Letter from Immigration Director Frederick Blair
(Excerpt from a letter written by Immigration Director Frederick Blair on February 14, 1939, in response to a request from Mrs. Salomonsohn to be temporarily admitted to Canada while she waited to be admitted to the United States.)
February 14, 1939
Mrs. Salomonsohn,
This case is just one of hundreds that are being pressed upon us in every conceivable way by Jewish residents of the United States. One would have thought that with 165 000 Jewish residents of Canada, incidentally a large percentage than any other port in the (British) Empire, we would have more applications of our own than we could deal with and that is exactly the case .....
Not one application has been granted by us for the temporary entry of persons whose interest in this country is making it a waiting room for the United States .....
I think I have said enough to show what folly it would be for us to offer American Jews a privilege we refuse our own.
(Signed)
Frederick Blair
Immigration Director
- "Letter from F.C. Blair to Ronald Fredenburgh, February 14, 1939," Library and Archives Canada
#7 Memoir of Robbie Waisman
(Excerpt of the memoir of Robbie Waisman, who was admitted to Canada as a war orphan after the Holocaust, that was included in the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre exhibition "Open Hearts, Closed Doors.")
Memoir of Robbie Waisman
I remember being told that no country in the world, except Palestine, wanted us. Nearly all of the orphans put their names on the list for Palestine, but getting into Palestine was made nearly impossible at the time by the British blockade. The two other options open to us were Canada and Australia. Australia was attractive to many of us because it was so far from Europe.
Getting into Canada was tough. The process was a very lengthy one and you had to be absolutely healthy. Wearing glasses was enough to disqualify you. I had trouble getting approval because of my very low blood pressure. I had repeated blood tests and had all but given up hope when I finally got a letter accepting me into Canada.
I thought of Canada as a young country full of wheat fields. It seemed to be a place where I would never run out of bread. Canada represented a new life and a new beginning. Although I was anxious about the unknown, I remember feeling a tremendous amount of anticipation and excitement.
-Biography - Robbie Waisman, "Open Hearts, Closed Doors", Vancouver Holocaust Centre
#8 Petition for Canada to admit more refugees
(Excerpt from a petition placed in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on December 7, 1943 by the Canadian National Committee on Refugees who were trying to convince the government to change their stance on Jewish refugees and immigration.)
Something every warm-hearted Canadian should know about the refugee petition. Why is Canada at war?
Is it not to preserve a place in the world for human decency? Is it not because we believe no man or race has the right to enslave or destroy another man or race? Is our unacceptable expenditure of lives, labour and wealth justifiable for any lower reason?
If the cause of humanity is worth such an effort, it is also worth the consideration of the plight of a few thousand refugees at present stranded mainly in Portugal. Putting it another way, the whole Canadian war effort is weakened unless the principles which motivate it are applied in the specific, immediate and practical issues. Fighting Hitlerism means fighting Hitler's most bestial arts. It means rescuing those whom he would kill, giving sanctuary to those lucky enough to escape from him. It means admitting some of those refugees in Canada.
All this should be obvious. But it is not. Canada, one of the richest and most sincere of the United Nations, should be the first in giving refugees the right and room to live, which they were robbed of by Hitler. But she is among the last.
The Canadian Government is presently being petitioned to offer haven (a place of safety) to these derelicts (persons without a home, job, or property) .....To refrain from signing it is to endorse the present attitude toward the refugees, an attitude little better than Hitler's.
Meanwhile it might be pointed out at the very outside that there are probably no more than 15 000 or 20 000 victims of Nazi tyranny who are in a position to come to this or any other sheltered land, and of these Canada might be expected to take in only a thousand or so.
- Irving Abella and Harold Troper, "None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948
#9 None Is Too Many
(Excerpt from the book "None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948" written by historians Irving Abella and Harold Troper about Canada's policy towards Jewish refugees.)
That Jews were not welcome in Canada during the early 1930s is not surprising; neither was anyone else. With one third of its people out of work, the country was understandably reluctant to accept job-hungry immigrants .....
As the man responsible for enforcing Canadian immigration policy, [Frederick] Blair mirrored the increasingly anti-immigration spirit of his times. He believed, said one observer, "that people should be kept out of Canada instead of being let in"; .....for Blair the term "refugee" was a code word for Jew .....But did Blair see himself as an anti-Semite? NO, for he was, in his own view, just being realistic -realistic about Canada's immigration needs and about the unsuitability of the Jew to those needs. To keep Jews out of Canada, he would often argue, did Jews a favour, even if they could not see it. The arrival of Jews would create anti-Semitism in Canada, undermining the security of the existing Canadian Jewish community and little benefitting the new arrival.
- Irving Abella and Harold Troper, "None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948
Assignment:
After reading the sources above, please answer the following questions in complete sentences -providing the necessary detail in the form of evidence and quotes.
*These are not short answers and will require you to critically reflect on the source readings.
Extension:
If you should so choose (this is an option), complete the following writing assignment for BONUS marks.
Summarize the event surrounding the M.S. St. Louis and why Jewish refugees aboard the ship were denied entry into Canada.
The summary can not be more than 100-150 words. Be succinct but thorough.
*Please type your work in a Word document and then email it to me as an attachment at: [email protected]
#1 Order-in-council, P.C. 695
(Excerpt from an order-in-council passed by the Canadian parliament on March 21, 1931, set the closed-door immigration policy that would stand for over a decade.)
From and after the 18th March, 1931, and until otherwise ordered, the landing in Canada of immigrants of all classes and occupations, is hereby prohibited, except as hereafter provided:
- A British Subject entering Canada directly or indirectly from Great Britain or Northern Ireland, the Irish Free State, Newfoundland, the United States of America, New Zealand, Australia, or the Union of South Africa, who has sufficient means to maintain himself until employment is secured .....
- A United States citizen entering Canada from the United States who has sufficient means to maintain himself until employment is secured.
- The wife or unmarried child under 18 years of age of any person legally admitted to and resident in Canada who is in a position to receive and care for his dependents.
- An agriculturalist having sufficient means to farm in Canada.
#2 Letter by Frederick Blair
(Excerpt from a letter written in 1938 by Frederick Blair, the Director of Immigration of the Department of Mines and Resources from 1936 to 1944, to F. Maclure Scalders, former Commissioner of the Saskatoon Board of Trade.)
To F. Maclure Scalders,
I often think that instead of persecution it would be far better if we more often told (Jews) frankly why many of them are unpopular .....If they would divest (rid) themselves of certain of their habits I am sure they could be just as popular in Canada as our Scandinavians.
(Signed)
Frederick Blair
Director of Immigration
Department of Mines and Resources, 1938
- "Open hearts, closed doors teachers guide," Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre
#3 Personal Diary of Mackenzie King
(Excerpt from Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King's diary from Tuesday, March 29, 1938 in which he outlines his views on admitting Jewish refugees.)
Tuesday, March 29, 1938
A very difficult question has presented itself .....in admitting refugees from Austria, Germany, etc. That means, in a word, admitting numbers of Jews. My own feeling is that nothing is to be gained by creating an internal problem in an effort to meet an international one .....We must nevertheless seek to keep this continent free from unrest and from too great an intermixture of foreign strains of blood .....I fear I would have riots if we agreed to a policy that admitted numbers of Jews.
- "The diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, March 29, 1938," Library and Archives Canada
#4 Letter to the editor
(Excerpt from a letter to the editor written by Wilfred Grimes in the July 5, 1938 edition of the Vancouver Sun.)
Vancouver Sun
July 5, 1938
Undoubtedly the Jew is a miracle among the nations.
No people in the history of the world has undergone such persecution. They have, as a nation, been scattered throughout the world, suffered terrible privations [lacking the essentials for survival], been scourged [punished] and ravaged in every shape and form, yet the Jew lives on, and they remain a separate people .....
Is it not a fact that the Jew always brings prosperity to the country where he is allowed to live in peace? Is not their literature the finest in the world? .....
The nation or power that persecutes the Jew today will surely go the way the former nations and empires have gone. They will only be a memory, and that for a very short time, while the poor, persecuted Jew will live on.
-Wilfred Grimes
-Wilfred Grimes, "The Jew," Letter to the Editor, Vancouver Sun, 5 July 1938, p.4
#5 Sol Messinger aboard the M.S. St. Louis
(Excerpt from a 2011 newspaper article about Sol Messinger, who along with his parents, were Jewish refugees aboard the M.S. St. Louis that was turned away from Canada in 1939. Messinger and his family were later accepted as refugees in Belgium and survived the Holocaust.)
"Nobody wanted us," Dr. Messinger, now 78 and a retired physician in Buffalo, N.Y. said in an interview with the National Post. "We were Jews, we were expendable .....It was terrible -terrible, terrible -of Canada and the United States, of all countries, to not let us in."
Dr. Messinger said the German crew had treated the passengers "as human beings," even offering them "big breakfasts, and ice cream with mini umbrellas pegged in the scoop." Canada, though, would offer the family nothing.
-Katherine Blaze Carlson, "'None is too many' memorial for Jews turned away from Canada 1939," The National Post, 17 January 2011
#6 Letter from Immigration Director Frederick Blair
(Excerpt from a letter written by Immigration Director Frederick Blair on February 14, 1939, in response to a request from Mrs. Salomonsohn to be temporarily admitted to Canada while she waited to be admitted to the United States.)
February 14, 1939
Mrs. Salomonsohn,
This case is just one of hundreds that are being pressed upon us in every conceivable way by Jewish residents of the United States. One would have thought that with 165 000 Jewish residents of Canada, incidentally a large percentage than any other port in the (British) Empire, we would have more applications of our own than we could deal with and that is exactly the case .....
Not one application has been granted by us for the temporary entry of persons whose interest in this country is making it a waiting room for the United States .....
I think I have said enough to show what folly it would be for us to offer American Jews a privilege we refuse our own.
(Signed)
Frederick Blair
Immigration Director
- "Letter from F.C. Blair to Ronald Fredenburgh, February 14, 1939," Library and Archives Canada
#7 Memoir of Robbie Waisman
(Excerpt of the memoir of Robbie Waisman, who was admitted to Canada as a war orphan after the Holocaust, that was included in the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre exhibition "Open Hearts, Closed Doors.")
Memoir of Robbie Waisman
I remember being told that no country in the world, except Palestine, wanted us. Nearly all of the orphans put their names on the list for Palestine, but getting into Palestine was made nearly impossible at the time by the British blockade. The two other options open to us were Canada and Australia. Australia was attractive to many of us because it was so far from Europe.
Getting into Canada was tough. The process was a very lengthy one and you had to be absolutely healthy. Wearing glasses was enough to disqualify you. I had trouble getting approval because of my very low blood pressure. I had repeated blood tests and had all but given up hope when I finally got a letter accepting me into Canada.
I thought of Canada as a young country full of wheat fields. It seemed to be a place where I would never run out of bread. Canada represented a new life and a new beginning. Although I was anxious about the unknown, I remember feeling a tremendous amount of anticipation and excitement.
-Biography - Robbie Waisman, "Open Hearts, Closed Doors", Vancouver Holocaust Centre
#8 Petition for Canada to admit more refugees
(Excerpt from a petition placed in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix on December 7, 1943 by the Canadian National Committee on Refugees who were trying to convince the government to change their stance on Jewish refugees and immigration.)
Something every warm-hearted Canadian should know about the refugee petition. Why is Canada at war?
Is it not to preserve a place in the world for human decency? Is it not because we believe no man or race has the right to enslave or destroy another man or race? Is our unacceptable expenditure of lives, labour and wealth justifiable for any lower reason?
If the cause of humanity is worth such an effort, it is also worth the consideration of the plight of a few thousand refugees at present stranded mainly in Portugal. Putting it another way, the whole Canadian war effort is weakened unless the principles which motivate it are applied in the specific, immediate and practical issues. Fighting Hitlerism means fighting Hitler's most bestial arts. It means rescuing those whom he would kill, giving sanctuary to those lucky enough to escape from him. It means admitting some of those refugees in Canada.
All this should be obvious. But it is not. Canada, one of the richest and most sincere of the United Nations, should be the first in giving refugees the right and room to live, which they were robbed of by Hitler. But she is among the last.
The Canadian Government is presently being petitioned to offer haven (a place of safety) to these derelicts (persons without a home, job, or property) .....To refrain from signing it is to endorse the present attitude toward the refugees, an attitude little better than Hitler's.
Meanwhile it might be pointed out at the very outside that there are probably no more than 15 000 or 20 000 victims of Nazi tyranny who are in a position to come to this or any other sheltered land, and of these Canada might be expected to take in only a thousand or so.
- Irving Abella and Harold Troper, "None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948
#9 None Is Too Many
(Excerpt from the book "None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948" written by historians Irving Abella and Harold Troper about Canada's policy towards Jewish refugees.)
That Jews were not welcome in Canada during the early 1930s is not surprising; neither was anyone else. With one third of its people out of work, the country was understandably reluctant to accept job-hungry immigrants .....
As the man responsible for enforcing Canadian immigration policy, [Frederick] Blair mirrored the increasingly anti-immigration spirit of his times. He believed, said one observer, "that people should be kept out of Canada instead of being let in"; .....for Blair the term "refugee" was a code word for Jew .....But did Blair see himself as an anti-Semite? NO, for he was, in his own view, just being realistic -realistic about Canada's immigration needs and about the unsuitability of the Jew to those needs. To keep Jews out of Canada, he would often argue, did Jews a favour, even if they could not see it. The arrival of Jews would create anti-Semitism in Canada, undermining the security of the existing Canadian Jewish community and little benefitting the new arrival.
- Irving Abella and Harold Troper, "None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948
Assignment:
After reading the sources above, please answer the following questions in complete sentences -providing the necessary detail in the form of evidence and quotes.
*These are not short answers and will require you to critically reflect on the source readings.
- How did different Canadians feel about Jewish immigration to Canada?
- For what reasons did Canada limit immigration?
- Was the Canadian government justified in limiting Jewish immigration and refugees during the 1930s and 1940s?
Extension:
If you should so choose (this is an option), complete the following writing assignment for BONUS marks.
Summarize the event surrounding the M.S. St. Louis and why Jewish refugees aboard the ship were denied entry into Canada.
The summary can not be more than 100-150 words. Be succinct but thorough.
*Please type your work in a Word document and then email it to me as an attachment at: [email protected]