History of the Jews in Canada

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Advertising poster for the recruitment of Jews into British infantry during World War I: "Jews around the world love the freedom for which they have fought and will continue to fight."

The history of the Jews in Canada begins with the immigration of Esther Brandeau , a Jewish girl who arrived in Canada disguised as a boy in 1738 but was expelled back to France a year later because she refused to convert to Christianity . The reason was that before the British conquest of New France in 1663, King Louis XIV officially declared Canada a province of the Kingdom of France and decreed that only Catholics were allowed to enter the colony.

Early history

Aaron Hart
Congregation Emmanu-El Synagogue, built in Victoria , British Columbia in 1863 , the oldest synagogue in Canada, where services are still celebrated today.
Abraham de Sola

The first Jewish comers to Canada were members of the British Army who fought for England in the Seven Years War, won by Great Britain in 1760. The first Jewish resident of Québec was Samuel Jacobs in 1759, but his descendants were soon assimilated. Aaron Hart is more likely to be described as the first Jew in Canada who was married to a Jew and raised his children in the Jewish tradition. Lieutenant Hart came to Montreal from New York City with the troops of Jeffrey Amherst in 1760 during the Seven Years War in North America . After finishing his service in the army, he settled in Trois-Rivières .

Most of the early Jewish Canadians were either fur traders or served in the British Army. In 1829, an exception for Jews was added to the French-era law that forced non-Christian Canadians to convert to Christianity. This gave male Jews full political and religious rights in 1831. In 1850, the Jewish population in Canada was only about 450, including 200 in Montreal, where the first synagogue was inaugurated in 1852. Abraham de Sola (1825–1886) was the first rabbi in Canada to be elected minister of the Shearith Israel Congregation of Montreal in 1846. He was president of the Natural History Society for several years . In 1858 he was awarded the Legum Doctor degree from McGill University . In 1871, Canada's first census recorded 1,115 Jews.

1880-1945

Stumbling block for Kurt Terhoch, his mother grew up in the Humberghaus , the Jewish family fled to Winnipeg in 1939

With the beginning of the pogroms in the Russian Empire in the 1880s, rising anti-Semitism in Europe, the outbreak of World War I and encouraged by the country's development efforts after the founding of the Canadian Confederation , many European Jews fled to Canada, increasing the Jewish population up to In 1930 it rose to over 155,000. Most of the immigrants who settled in Montreal or Toronto started out as peddlers and casual laborers. Some eventually managed to create companies that played a leading role in developing the textile industry . Jews who settled in western Canada were merchants and artisans and built the fishing industry. Some Jews tried farming, but with little success because they lacked farming experience.

After the First World War, Canada changed its immigration policy. The state denied immigration to people who were not white skin, were not of Anglo-Saxon, Protestant origin, or were not from the United Kingdom. In the course of the Great Depression ("Great Depression"), the severe economic crisis in the USA, which began on October 24, 1929 with " Black Thursday " and dominated the 1930s, Canada tightened the entry requirements, especially for racist and religious reasons. Despite the intense efforts of the Canadian Jewish Congress , which received support from the socialist party Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), to enable the Jews of Europe to flee to Canada, tens of thousands were denied entry and only 5,000 refugees were given refuge. Among them, refugees on the ship MS St. Louis were refused entry under the Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King . At the same time, around 20,000 Jewish Canadians volunteered for the military to fight for Canada in World War II . They fought first on the landing in Normandy and later in Germany. There were 900 killed and wounded. Many received high awards, such as Rosa Gutmann .

While the persecution and extermination of Jews took place in Germany from 1933 to 1945 , there were three Jewish members of parliament in Ottawa who tried in vain to counteract the anti-Semitism and the rejection of refugees from the government.

After the Second World War

Montreal General Jewish Hospital, opened in 1934.

Canada liberalized its immigration policy after World War II and allowed about 40,000 Holocaust survivors to enter. Among them were several thousand Jews who survived in the Shanghai ghetto . In addition, thousands of Jewish emigrants left the former French colonies in North Africa in the 1950s and settled in the francophone cities of Montreal and Quebec City , which linguistically suited them. Between 1941 and 1961, the Jewish population in Canada grew from 170,000 to 260,000. The Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center ( Center commémoratif de l'Holocauste à Montréal ) was founded in 1979 by a group of Holocaust survivors. Under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau , Parliament passed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, which permanently enshrines freedom of expression , equality, indigenous rights, the right to use one of Canada's two official languages, and the protection of multiculturalism in Canada are. This charter further promoted the integration of Jews and other minorities.

Canada's Jewish community today

Canada has the fourth largest Jewish community in the world, after Israel , the United States, and France . The Jewish population comprises 386,000 inhabitants (as of 2015), which corresponds to 1.1% of the population. It is concentrated in the greater Toronto (175,000) and Montreal (90,700) areas. In addition, smaller communities exist in Vancouver , Winnipeg , Ottawa , Calgary , Edmonton, and other cities. The Jewish community in Canada consists largely of Ashkenazi Jews and their descendants. Canadian Jews typically have a good school education and are relatively wealthy. The communities cultivate a lively cultural and community life.

According to a telephone survey of 510 Canadians by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in 2013–2014, an estimated 14% (± 4.4%) of the adult population in Canada have significant anti-Semitic sentiments.

Organizations

The following Jewish organizations exist or existed in Canada (selection):

  • Atlantic Jewish Council
  • Canadian Jewish Congress
  • Canada-Israel Committee
  • Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee
  • Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy
  • Independent Jewish Voices (Canada)
  • B'nai B'rith Canada
  • United Jewish People's Order

See also

  • Humberghaus , some members of the Jewish Humberg and Terhorst families managed to escape from the Lower Rhine to Canada, while the majority were murdered by the Germans.

literature

  • Denis Vaugeois: The First Jews in North America. The Extraordinary Story of the Hart Family, 1760-1860. Baraka Books, Montreal 2012 ISBN 1-926824-09-1
    • Review , by Victor Rabinovitch (in English)
  • L. Ruth Klein Ed .: Nazi Germany, Canadian Responses. Confronting Antisemitism in the Shadow of War. McGill-Queen's University Press , Montreal Qu. 2012 ISBN 9780773540187
  • Arthur Propp: From Königsberg to Canada. Autobiography. With Dan Propp. Accordion to Dan Publ., Richmond BC ISBN 9781927626580 (in German)
  • Gerald Tulchinsky: Taking Root: The Origins of the Canadian Jewish Community . Lester Publishing, Toronto 1992. ISBN 0-87451-609-9
  • Irving Abella: A Coat of Many Colors: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada . Lester Publishing, Toronto 1990. , ISBN 0-88619-251-X
  • Jacques Langlais, David Rome: Juifs et Québécois français: 200 ans d'histoire commune. Fides, Montréal 1986
  • Josef Eisinger : Escape and Refuge. Memories of an eventful youth. Ed. Documentation archive of the Austrian resistance , DÖW. Translated by Kitty Weinberger, Christine Schindler, Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider. Publisher as Hg., Vienna 2019 ISBN 9783901142741 (contemporary witness report)
  • Andrea Strutz: Effects of the Cultural Capital in Careers of Young Austrian Jewish Refugees in Canada. A Biographical Approach to their Life Stories , pp. 175-193; & Yvonne Völkl: (D) écrire la vie en tant qu'enfants rescapes. La representation du trauma dans les ecritures migrantes juives au feminin du Quebec, pp. 195 - 208, both in: Klaus-Dieter Ertler , Patrick Imbert Ed .: Cultural challenges of migration in Canada. Les défis culturels de la migration au Canada. Canadiana, 12. Peter Lang, Bern 2013
  • Yvonne Völkl: Jewish Memory Discourses in Quebec's Francophone Migration Literature. Canadiana, 15. Peter Lang, Bern 2013

Web links

  • Museum of Jewish Montreal. (available in both national languages) Photo gallery, contemporary witnesses , exhibition
  • Juifs canadiens ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved October 4, 2019.
  • Jews in Canada , detailed representation in English, numerous ills., In the Jewish Women Archive JWA, 2018, by Michael Brown, Canada: From Outlaw to Supreme Court Justice 1738-2005 . Contains numerous references at the end.
  • Eugen Banauch: "Home" as a thought between quotation marks. The Fluid Exile of Jewish Third Reich Refugee Writers in Canada 1940-2006. Full text, diss. Phil. University of Vienna 2007 (revised version also as print)
  • Doris Griesser: A long way to an immigrant Eldorado. Canada hardly took in any Jewish refugees during the Nazi persecution. Der Standard , June 21, 2014, based on Andrea Strutz, Graz
  • Library and Archives Canada review of their relevant holdings of microfilms and ten Jewish journals; as well as several web links to the catalog "Amicus"; all are hints for searching in the stocks. External web links to researchers and organizations are also listed. Also in Frz. adjustable.
  • Jews in Canada. By Bernard L. Vigod, Ottawa 1984, brochure, 21 pages, in Engl.
  • Rebecca Margolis, U of Ottawa, 2009 on Jewish immigration, role of Yiddish: Culture in Motion. Yiddish in Canadian Jewish Life. Detailed references

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Esther Brandeau . In: Jewish Virtual Library . Retrieved September 25, 2016.
  2. ^ A b c Andrew Ross, Andrew Smith, Canada's Entrepreneurs: From The Fur Trade to the 1929 Stock Market Crash: Portraits from the Dictionary of Canadian Biograph. University of Toronto Press, 2011, ISBN 1-4426-1286-X .
  3. ^ Carman Miller, Abraham de Sola , Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume 11, University of Toronto / Université Laval, 1982. Retrieved September 15, 2017.
  4. ↑ NM Hinshelwood: Montreal and Vicinity: being a history of the old town, a pictorial record of the modern city, its sports and pastimes, and an illustrated description of many charming summer resorts around . Desbarats & co., Canada 1903, ISBN 978-0-226-49407-4 , p. 53 . Retrieved September 25, 2016.
  5. ^ Belle Sequin, Reactions to the Holocaust , Scribd, April 19, 2012. Retrieved September 26, 2016.
  6. ↑ Arno Lustiger , The Jews' Share in the Allied Victory in World War II: Jewish soldiers in the fight against fascism . In: Hans Erler , “Against all futility”. Jewish Resistance to National Socialism Campus, 2003 ISBN 3-593-37362-9 . Retrieved October 3, 2016
  7. ↑ Abraham Albert Heaps, from 1925 to 1940; Samuel Factor, 1930-1945; Peter Bercovitch 1938 to 1942. All have lemmas in English Wikipedia.
  8. ↑ Annual Assessment 2015–2016 , The Jewish People Policy Institute, p. 16. Accessed September 25, 2016.
  9. ↑ 2011 figure . Here also more statistical data on the topic
  10. ^ ADL global 100-Canada . Anti-Defamation League. Retrieved March 25, 2016.
  11. ↑ see English Wikipedia