The unjust imprisonment of Jewish refugees in Canada during the Second World War is a little-known tragic event in our history. For years, few Jewish survivors of the internment camps wanted to talk about it, fearing their career prospects would be harmed.
Two decades after its original publication, I have edited a new paperback edition of a memoir which recounts how Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors were treated in those prisons in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick.
And now, it’s the immediacy of Blatant Injustice that makes it such a valuable eyewitness account.
While there are other memoirs written decades after internment, Dr. Walter W. Igersheimer wrote this account shortly after he was deported from internment Camp N in Sherbrooke, Que., to Cuba because the Liberal government in the 1940s did not want Jews to become Canadian citizens.
Igersheimer’s only ‘crime’ was that he was Jewish.
In his review of its original publication in 2005, the late Irving Abella noted, “Whenever (the internees) protested their ill treatment, they were told that what they received was ‘good enough for Jews.’ Yet at the same time… the resilient prisoners refused to bend to authority and created their own university, mounted plays and composed musicals.”
Blatant Injustice explores antisemitism in Canada during the war years, and holds many lessons about the demonization of refugees and immigrants for political purposes and the continual struggle to protect basic human rights in times of national crises.
The largest internment prison for Jewish refugees in Canada was located in Sherbrooke, Que.. I have just returned from that city as the guest of Bishop’s University, the Sherbrooke History Museum and the Sherbrooke Library. My goal was to correct a misconception that the Second World War prison there incarcerated only German POWs.
During my stay, I connected with current and former members of the small Jewish community, who told me how their grandparents had tried to help the Jewish internees win their freedom.
I will be giving talks about my new research including on Dec. 4 at the Northern District branch of the Toronto Public Library (40 Orchard View Blvd.) at 6:30 p.m. and another at the Thornhill Community Centre and Library (7755 Bayview Ave.) on Jan. 12, for which registration is required.
Ian Darragh is the editor and co-writer of Blatant Injustice, published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. He was the communications lead for the Government of Canada’s Holocaust Education outreach program, and served as editor-in-chief of Canadian Geographic.
