TORONTO —On Remembrance Day, when Canadians pay tribute to the members of the armed forces who helped liberate Europe from the Nazis, a smaller group will gather at Halifax’s Pier 21 to commemorate a less glorious chapter of our history.
On Nov. 11, a monument will be unveiled remembering the MS St. Louis, a German passenger ship that was turned away from Canada in 1939, ending the last, best chance for 937 passengers to avoid a fate at the hands of the Nazis. The ship returned to Europe, where more than 250 were killed.
Titled “None is Too Many: Memorializing and Commemorating the St. Louis,” the program will include a monument, as well as an educational component aimed at Canadian middle school children.
Bigotry and anti-Semitism were at the heart of the attitude that closed the door to the St. Louis refugees, and that attitude didn’t come out of the blue, said David Goldberg, Canadian Jewish Congress’ project manager and educational consultant for the commemoration. Congress received $500,000 from Citizenship and Immigration Canada to mount the exhibit under the Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP).
Goldberg said the exhibit that will serve as the centrepiece for the St. Louis commemoration will be unveiled in April or May, following the adjudication of a competition that attracted prominent artists, sculptors and architects. “They are people of considerable prominence in their fields,” he said.
In addition, he is preparing a 16-page educational booklet to coincide with the event, which is geared to children in grades 6, 7 and 8. It will be distributed to schools across Canada, along with guides for teachers aiding them in presenting the material in class.
Goldberg said the monument at Pier 21 – Canada’s Ellis Island – “acknowledges Canada as the last country denying safe haven to the 900 plus Jews on the St. Louis.”
Cuba and the United States both turned the ship away before its captain attempted to disembark his passengers in Canada. However, Canada’s immigration policy was being executed by Frederick Blair, a bigot and anti-Semite who had been appointed director of the immigration branch of the Department of Mines and Resources by then-prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.
“Blair didn’t make this decision out of the blue,” Goldberg said. His views were shared by the “upper echelons of government and society,” and the social, economic and political conditions in Canada at the time permitted the King government to adopt these policies.
Canada at the time was marked by “an underlying anti-Semitism, nativism, [high] unemployment, fear of the unknown, conservatism and racial and ethnic [bigotry],” Goldberg said.
Jews had been singled out among other groups as undesirable for immigration since the 1890s, but restrictions weren’t put in place until the 1930s, he added.
Goldberg said the educational booklet will address these issues, but it won’t paint the historical record as being monolithically bleak.
The booklet concludes with “a very positive message,” noting that starting in 1947, the country’s immigration policy changed, with Canada becoming more welcoming to refugees. From 1933 to 1947, Canada admitted only 5,000 Jewish refugees, the lowest of any western nation, Goldberg noted.
“I think there is a causal relationship between the negative experiences the Canadian public took – the embarrassment and shame people took from the St. Louis experience – and after 1947 when the Canadian government changed policies on absorbing Holocaust refugees,” he said.
The Remembrance Day program is expected to attract senior officials from all levels of government, people from various walks of life, Holocaust survivors and even former passengers from the St. Louis, he added.