Adolph Friedman, a Latvian Jewish man, settled near what is today known as Tacoma, Washington. When Friedman arrived in 1845 the land was jointly occupied by America and Britain. This technically makes Friedman the first Jewish person to arrive in this region of British North America as at the time he arrived they still had a claim on the area. The year after Friedman arrived the issue was settled once and for all; Britain ceded this area to the United States as part of the Oregon Treaty. Friedman’s status as the first Jewish person in this region is understandably controversial.
Friedman became a merchant supplying settlers, fishermen and miners across the border in BC. Friedman crossed the border into the British area to find love; he travelled to Victoria to get married to his relative Maha Stusser. Friedman returned to Tacoma with his new bride. Their descendents still live in Tacoma and Seattle, Washington as well as Vancouver, BC.
The Jewish community of Victoria purchased burial ground and consecrated it in 1860. This was the first Jewish burrial ground in the region. Jewish religious law requires burial to take place in a consecrated cemetery.
Morris Price was murdered in his store at Cayoosh Flats (now Lillooet). A Prussian from Berlin, Morris was described as quiet and inoffensive. While working in his store one Friday evening, Morris was attacked by two assailants and stabbed to death. Morris was the first person to be buried in the cemetery in Victoria in 1861.
The Vancouver Jewish community acquired land for their own cemetery in 1887. A portion of the cities Mountain View cemetery was allotted to the Jewish community to be used for Jewish burials. This development represents the growth of the Vancouver Jewish community.
To read more about the murder of Morris Price in The Scribeclick here.
David Oppenheimer, affectionately referred to as the “Father of Vancouver,” was elected mayor. Among his many achievements, Oppenheimer is credited with building bridges uniting the city, laying sidewalks, developing the town’s water supply system, organizing the transit system, founding the YMCA and purchasing the land for the magnificent Stanley Park.
David was one of the well-known Oppenheimer Brothers. The five brothers came up to British North America from San Francisco during the gold rush. Charles Oppenheimer established a trading company to supply the miners in Victoria. Together, the brothers expanded the company putting posts at Yale, Fort Hope, Lytton and Barkerville.
In 1868 a fire tore through Barkerville resulting in a loss of over $100,000 for the Oppenheimer’s. The brothers built an even bigger store and bought a fire engine which Isaac ran as Captain of the Fire Brigade. Isaac, like David, was involved in politics in Vancouver as a member of Vancouver’s city council.
In 1886 a fire razed the town of Vancouver and, like in Barkerville, the Oppenheimer’s stepped in to the rescue. The Oppenheimer Warehouse became a temporary City Hall for the young city of Vancouver. The city’s prominence was in large part thanks to the work of the Oppenheimer’s. The brothers donated a third of their land holdings and convinced other major land owners to donate parts of their land in order to ensure that Vancouver would be the Pacific terminal of the CPR.
To discover more about the Oppenheimer family click here to read the article “The Oppenheimers of British Columbia.”
Gold was found in the Thompson and Fraser Rivers. This began a major gold rush which helped to populate the area.
Victoria became a booming metropolis to accommodate the thousands of prospectors and entrepreneurs involved in the Gold Rush. In 1858, a year after the start of the gold rush, Victoria became the second largest Jewish population in British North America. Most of the Jewish arrivals were veterans of the California gold rush. The majority had emigrated from Germany and Central Europe. The Jewish population contributed significantly to the growth of the city thanks to their education, talent, initiative and entrepreneurship. The commercial connections to San Francisco and their experiences in the Gold Rush of California were a benefit to the young city.
To learn more about the Jewish population in Victoria at this time click on the article "Birthplace of the Community."
The construction of the first synagogue, Temple Emanu-El, in Victoria began on June 2nd with the laying of the cornerstone. The event was a huge celebration that included a band from a visiting British naval ship, a long procession including members of St. Andrew’s Society, German and French societies, the Freemasons lodges, the chief justice of the colony, the mayor and hundreds of others along with most of the city’s community of 242 Jewish people. The event and the wide participation in it, shows the high esteem the Jewish community was held within the city of Victoria.
In 1913 a Jewish Hebrew school was founded in Vancouver. Originally taught in a house on Heatley Avenue by two sisters, the Rosengards, the school became incorporated in 1918 and named The Hebrew Day School with Max M. Grossman as its president. In 1920 the school was combined with the new Schara Tzedeck Synagogue. The school became independent in 1934 and in 1943 moved into an eleven room house on West Fourteenth Avenue.
Dr. Maurice Fox moved to British Columbia from Manitoba where he had studied medicine at Manitoba Medical College. Dr Fox explains:
“Following my internship at the Vancouver General Hospital, I fulfilled part of the Lord’s promise to Abraham – I inhabited one corner of the earth, namely a remote corner of B.C.”
Dr. Fox worked in a number of small towns, embracing his wanderlust until he married and settled down in Atlin in 1925/26.
Even though he had settled down, life was not dull. Dr. Fox served an area of 300,000 square miles. Dr. Fox explains:
“Here I practiced not only medicine but was called upon to do such duties as dentistry, veterinary surgery, health officer, and on occasion filling in for the embalmer. Life in those days was a hardship for all, especially pioneering doctors. A sick call up the creek would take one to two days on horseback in the summer; dog team and sled in the winter.” Dr. Fox had the help of a First Nations Shaman or Medicine Man who “chased the devil out of sick people.”
Dr. Fox moved to Vancouver in 1927 and set up a practice at the corner of Main and Hastings Streets between Skid Road and Chinatown. Dr. Fox was presented with the President’s Medal by the BC Tuberculosis-Christmas Seal Society in 1968 for his outstanding contribution to the fight against tuberculosis. Dr. Fox has also been honoured by the medical association for being a pioneer practitioner by naming him to their senior membership. On July 1, 1967 Dr. Fox was awarded the Centennial Medal on the hundredth anniversary of Canadian confederation.
The first regularly printed Jewish newspaper representing Western Jewish Canada was established. A few different names were tried and in October of 1930, eight months after its founding, the newspaper began calling itself The Jewish Western Bulletin. This name stuck until 2005 when it was sold and changed to The Jewish Independent. The newspaper covers local news and viewpoints as well as international issues affecting the community. In 1968 it won an Award of Excellence from the Israeli government. One of its editors, Samuel Kaplan, was elected president of the BC Ethnic Press Association in 1976; the association comprises of twenty one ethnic publications in BC.
When the newspaper began in 1930 it was run by the Jewish Community Council. The first 18 years of the newspapers life saw many different leaders and publishers. In 1949 the council hired a journalist, Abraham J. Arnold, to head up the paper. The pay was small and the work was immense but Abraham managed for eleven years. Abraham left the paper in 1960 when he accepted a job as the Public Relations director for the Jewish Federation in Montreal.
In 1960 the Kaplans, husband and wife Sam and Mona, took over the paper. They worked to grow the paper to a point where they no longer needed to accept financial support from the Jewish Community Council. The paper became independent. In 1995 the Kaplans were ready to retire. They leased the newspaper to the Buergers, an American father and son that managed a number of Jewish community newspapers. The lease was for three years with the plan that the Buergers would own the newspaper at the end of the term. Sadly the father passed away and the son could no longer take the newspaper as he had to return home to the States.
The Kaplans sold the newspaper to three of the employees – Kyle Berger, Cynthia Ramsay and Pat Johnson. Today the paper has a staff of eight full time employees and four part time employees and a number of freelance writers.
Leonard Frank passed away this year leaving behind a huge contribution to photography in BC, Canada and the World. Frank arrived on the Pacific Coast from Germany during the gold rush and like many others at the time, hoped to find his fortune in gold. This was not his fate, instead Frank won a raffle at the Alberni mining camp and received a camera. Frank began taking photographs right away and found his life’s passion and livelihood.
Due to Anti-German sentiment during WWI, Frank was accused of being a spy. The many photos he took of the coast of the British colony would have been valuable to the Germans and this helped to fuel the suspicions of the Alberni locals. Frank was forced to leave Alberni and arrived in Vancouver in 1916 where he opened a shop and laboratory.
Frank built up a reputation taking photographs for the Vancouver Daily Province, in the National Geographic and the Saturday Evening Post. Frank became the photographer for the Vancouver Board of Trade; he also undertook assignments for the provincial and federal governments.
Frank was a small hard wiry man who loved to trek up tough terrain to get brilliant photographs. In 1923 Frank was honoured with the Trail Rider and Mountaineer Badge presented by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Frank is responsible for more than a third of the 100,000 photographs in the BC Historic Photograph section of the Vancouver Public Library. Historians regard his collection as the most important in the West and the second most in all of Canada. Franks field logging collection is second to none. The Jewish Museum & Archives of British Columbia owns approximately 39,000 photographs from the Leonard Frank Studio collection.
To see Frank photographs from the Jewish Museum & Archives of BC click here.
To go to the Vancouver Public Library\'s Leonard Frank collection click here.
The Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia was founded by Cyril Leonoff along with a small group of dedicated individuals.
The Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia, is the preeminent and authoritative body for the collection and sharing of community memory of Jewish life in British Columbia.
Since 1970, the Society’s work has included operating the Jewish Museum & Archives of British Columbia, publishing a regular journal, The Scribe, authoring several books, recording oral histories of community members throughout the province, and preserving and making accessible the important photographs and records of the Jewish community through traveling exhibits and educational programs.
Karen James, a Jewish Vancouverite, competed in Olympic Games held in Munich, Germany. Karen was present in the Olympic Village when the Palestinian terrorist group called Black September held the Israeli Olympic Team hostage. The athletes were killed by their captors at another location.
At this time the historic Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union was taking place. Karen and four Canadian friends snuck into a press building outside the athletes’ village to watch a broadcast of the one of the hockey games in the series. At the end of the game the four friends decided to climb the fence to get back into the Olympic Village rather than go through the main gates. While the Canadians were climbing the fence they noticed another group who were doing the same thing. Karen recalls that she and her friends could tell the other group were not athletes. Little did they know the significance of this revelation.
The next day Karen and her friends discovered that the people they had seen the night before were part of a Palestinian terrorist organization called Black September. This group took the Israeli Olympic team hostage and demanded that Israel and Germany release 236 prisoners. The Israeli government refused to negotiate while the German government attempted to find a solution.
The German government agreed to take Black September to an airplane which the group could use to go anywhere they wished. Meanwhile the Germans set up snipers around the airport and placed security agents on the plane disguised as flight attendants. A gunfight of nearly two hours ensued leaving all of the hostages, five of the terrorist group and one German police officer dead.
The following morning there was a brief memorial service held at an Olympic stadium; afterwards the games continued. Many people, Jewish and non-Jewish, felt that the games should not have been continued out of respect for the murdered Israeli athletes.
An unknown arsonist firebombed Temple Sholom in what is presumed an anti-Semitic act. The fire, smoke and water caused $400,000 worth of damage to the Temple. Five Westpoint Grey churches condemned the attacks and contributed funds to help rebuild the synagogue.
The BC Provincial Human Rights Tribunal ruled that Doug Collins, a columnist for the North Shore News, violated the Human Rights Code in four of his articles. The case was brought by Harry Abrams, a Victoria businessman. Collins’ four articles, when taken together, were found to expose Jewish people to hatred or contempt.
In 1997 the Canadian Jewish Congress took Doug Collins to court for one of these four articles and the case was dismissed. The article was entitled “Hollywood Propaganda” and was written about the film Schindler’s List which the author called Swindler’s List. The article called into question the historical estimate of six million Jewish people killed in the Holocaust.
This first tribunal found the article to be anti-Semitic but there was not enough evidence to say that it violated the law. The 1999 win was controversial as some believe that the ruling violates free speech. Collins took the BC Human Rights Act to the BC Supreme Court arguing that it violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which protects freedom of speech. The court refused to hear the case until the BC When Doug Collins passed away at age 80 in 2001 the case was dropped.
Vancouver Hillel marched in the Vancouver Gay Pride Parade with the support of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, Temple Sholom and the Jewish Family Service Agency. The group wished to educate the 600,000 people in the crowd that Israel is welcoming of GLBTQ people and that Israel is the safest place to be openly gay in the Middle East. This participation was also partially a reaction to the entry of Queers Against Israel Apartheid. The Hillel group wished to counter the groups claims that Israel is “pink washing” their human rights record with the pro-GLBTQ campaign.
A large debt, a depression in the economy following the gold rush and political unrest led the colony of British Columbia to join Confederation. British Columbia would join Canada on the condition that Canada take on British Columbia’s debt, assure responsible government representation and build a wagon-road connecting the eastern part of Canada with British Columbia. Canada agreed to British Columbia’s terms and much to the surprise of the new sixth province, offered to build a trans-continental railroad.
The Dominion of Canada was born with the passing of the British North America Act. Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia joined together in confederation.Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia joined together in confederation.
In September of 1864 a meeting took place called the Charlottetown Conference. It was originally meant for the Maritime colonies to discuss a union; however, Quebec and Ontario joined in to lobby for a union of all British North American colonies. The proposal Quebec and Ontario had for the Maritimers was continued loyalty to Britain, a strong federal government with provincial control for local affairs, representation by population for the Lower House or Assembly and regional representation for the Upper House or Senate. Nova Scotia and New Brunswick agreed to the proposal and it was brought forth to the British Parliament. The proposal was accepted and the British North America Act created the Dominion of Canada.
Canada grew into the country it is today over a number of years. Manitoba joined in 1870, British Columbia became the sixth province in 1871, PEI was next in 1873, in 1905 Alberta and Saskatchewan were created out of the Northwest Territories, and finally Newfoundland and Labrador joined Canada in 1949.
Refugees of the Russian pogroms came to Canada in droves during this period. Some came by choice, others by chance. The government accepted them and sent them out west to Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta to settle the land and to farm. Soon other Eastern European groups followed as the restrictions and abuse in their homelands increased. All were encouraged to go west.
Initially no land was provided for these refugees but later a number of attempts to create colonies for them were made – some successful some horrendous disasters. These colonies were created and funded by various groups such as the Jewish Colonization Association and The Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society. Other towns, such as Edenbridge in Saskatchewan were created by independent Jewish people applying for land grants. Life was hard on the prairies.
Winters were long and harsh, hard work poured into crops could be ruined by heat, hailstorms, grasshoppers or drought. The pioneers lived in isolation from supplies, hospitals and medical care. Women are perhaps the unsung heroes of this group as they had to run the households (with no washer and dryers or dishwashers), raise the children, care for the livestock, bring in wood and water to keep the household going and on top of that run the farm when their husbands had to leave to get supplies.
An example of the difficult life is the story an early pioneer in the Wapella Settlement tells. Barish recalls:
“I remember one time I was coming home it was 40 degrees below zero and I couldn’t keep myself warm. Even the oxen were shaking their heads—we were facing such a strong wind. I was afraid to lay down in the sleigh to sleep in case I’d freeze to death. I couldn’t keep warm walking behind the oxen because they were too slow. So I had to go back half a mile and started running to catch up to them—that’s how I warmed myself—we came to a neighbour about four miles from our place, Mrs. Pelanovsky—she said,’ you’re going to freeze to death—you can’t go home, you’re going to stay overnight’. I said ‘how can I stay overnight, my people will think that I froze to death’, so I tried a note to the oxen’s horns to tell Dad that ‘I’m staying overnight at Pelanovsky’s house.’ I then let the oxen go home. The oxen got home, the dog started barking and father came out. When he saw the oxen but didn’t see me, he figured Eli must have frozen on the trail. So he started out after me. But my brother, who was unhitching the oxen—saw the note on the horn and called father back.”
Because of immigration the Jewish presence changed a great deal – it transformed from a small population of Anglized and integrated Jewish people to a predominately Yiddish speaking impoverished group. In 1882 there were around 2,500 Jewish people in Canada and after the mass migrations in1914 there were over 100,000. Synagogues increased from half a dozen in 1880 to well over a hundred by 1914. The Jewish community went from being a negligible minority to a significant one.
The change in the community led to an increase in Anti-Semitism in Canada – it by no means matched the horrors in Europe but it was significant. And Jewish people were not the only victims of racism of this period – other groups such as the Chinese and Japanese suffered these attitudes as well. Anti-Semitism was particularly bad in Quebec where the Catholic Church dominated and prosthelytized about the dangers of the Jewish people as enemies of the Church.
In addition to this anti-Semitism there was a tension between the impoverished newly arrived Jewish immigrants and the more established wealthy Jewish families in Canada. The two groups had different attitudes and religious practices from one another. One arena this tension boiled over in was the garment industry. Older Jewish families owned the garment factories and the newer immigrants worked in them. The immigrant workers formed unions and held a series of strikes, most of which were unsuccessful but some headway was made.
Despite this animosity the wealthier Jewish community established many aid organizations to help the poor. The new immigrants established their own tiny synagogues to replicate their religious practices from their home countries. The new immigrants also formed mutual benefit societies to take care of each other and not be reliant on the richer Jewish community.
From 1933 to 1948 Canada had a definitively anti-Jewish immigration policy. This occurred from the beginning of Hitler’s reign of terror in 1933, during the Second World War when it became apparent that the Jewish people’s fate in Europe was death, and immediately following the war when there were many displaced Jewish people needing homes away from the lands where they had suffered so much.
During the twelve years of Nazi terror (1933-1945) Canada took fewer than 5,000 Jewish refugees. This number was humiliatingly small compared to the USA’s 200,000; Palestine’s 125,000; Britain’s 70,000; Argentina’s 50,000; Brazil’s 27,000; China’s 25,000; and Bolivia and Chile’s 14,000 each. One famous episode that illustrates the Canadian immigration principle during this time is that of the S.S. St. Louis.
In 1939 the S.S. St Louis ship filled with more than 900 German Jewish refugees came to the New World in hope of a refuge from the horror of the Nazi regime. The ship was turned away from Canada; Blair, the man in charge of immigration, claimed that he could not accept the refugees because it would bring a flood of Jewish people that Canada would not be able to accommodate. The ship ended up returning to Europe and three quarters of those aboard were murdered in Nazi death camps.
There were a number of factors that lead to the barring of Jewish immigrants at a time when they desperately needed a refuge. There was the great depression of the interwar years that stopped almost all immigration to Canada, vocal anti-Jewish sentiment of Quebec politicians, the governments’ fear of Canada becoming a dumping ground for Jewish refugees in resettlement plans by Britain and America, and a fear of political leaders that welcoming Jewish refugees would lose them votes.
In 1948 Canada had an economic boom and was desperate for workers. Canadian attitudes towards Jewish immigration changed as new leaders came in and the need for people continued. Canada opened its doors and almost two million newcomers entered including thousands of Jews – most survivors of death camps. Anti-Semitism seemed to decrease at this time as the horrors of the Holocaust shocked many Canadians.
By this year the government of Ontario ruled that discrimination against any minority when hiring, renting or selling homes was illegal. Within the next decade the federal government and most of the provinces did the same.
In the 1960s the Jewish role in the development of Canadian history was recognized by The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. The founding father of Jewish Canadian literature was A.M. Klein. Klein was born in Montreal in 1909. He was well known for his poetry and won the Governor General’s Award for a collection of satirical poetry on Quebec entitle The Rocking Chair in 1948. Klein influenced a number of Jewish writers in Montreal including Mordecai Richler, Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton and Ted Allan.
In 1968 the Parti Quebecois was formed. In the years following its creation the separatist political party grew in popularity. This led to the gradual migration of Anglophones out of Quebec; which in time decreased the size of the Jewish population in Montreal. By the 1980s Toronto surpassed Montreal as the largest Jewish community in Canada.
The First World War began in 1914. Europe was a powder keg waiting for a spark to set it off. Disputes over land and trade, resentment from past conflicts, dissatisfaction with the balance of power and an arms race to build more powerful armies and navies were the powder in the keg. The assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the spark that set it off. Europe became embroiled in a war with massive casualties. Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) were the Central Powers fighting against the Allies – France, Russia and Great Britain.
Canada’s ties to Britain brought her, along with commonwealth countries such as Australia, into the European war. From a population of a few million, about 620,000 Canadian men and women served in the war. More than 66,000 of these men and women were killed.
The war caused problems for Jewish immigrants from Germany of which there were many; Canada was fighting against the Central Powers which made Germany an enemy. Anti-German sentiments among Canadians and many people questioned the loyalty of German-Canadians. One German Jewish figure who suffered discrimination due to his nationality was Leonard Frank, the famous photographer of BC.
Edward Joseph Seidelman was the first known Jewish man to enter into the University of British Columbia. Seidelman joined the UBC contingent of the Canadian army and, like other Jewish Canadians, fought in World War One. Seidelman died at the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium.
In 1848, revolutions swept across Europe. These revolutions started in France and moved to the German states, Austria-Hungary and Italy. When the uprising failed rulers became the more conservative which encouraged many people to leave. A large number of Germans immigrated to North America due to the unrest; this led to the development of the early German Jewish immigrant community in BC and Canada.
Czar Alexander II was assassinated which led to one of the worst pogroms in Russia. The successor of the assassinated Czar, Alexander III, introduced repressive regulations for Jewish people. The May laws of 1882 expelled Jewish people from their homes and required them to live in a confined area known as the Pale of Settlement. This area had been created by Catharine the Great in 1891 but requirements to live there had loosened.
In Canada the Russian pogroms resulted in a spike in immigration. This immigration was motivated not only by the violence of the pogroms but also by the lack of economic opportunities afforded to Jewish people and the grinding poverty that resulted.
Glossary term: Pogrom is a Russian word which means “To wreak havoc, to demolish violently.” It is typically applied to periods in which there is violence against Jewish people. Often the violence was government sanctioned.
In 1894 Major Huber Henry of the French Intelligence, received a document that indicated someone from the French military had leaked classified information to the German consulate in Paris. Alfred Dreyfus, Captain in the French military and a Jewish man, was arrested for this crime of treason. False documents had been made to incriminate Dreyfus. Dreyfus was stripped of his rank and sentenced to deportation to Devils Island. The family of Dreyfus and his supporters tried in vain to prove his innocence.
In 1898 the famous author Emile Zola wrote an open letter to Félix Faure entitled “J’Accuse...!” which was published in Georges Clemenceau’s L’Aurore. The article denounced the military for its lies and cover-ups; it led to Zola’s condemnation for libel. The country became divided into Dreyfusards and Anti-Dreyfusards.
In 1899 Dreyfus returned to France from Devils Island to be retried. Tensions were high between the factions during the trial. Dreyfus was found guilty again and sentenced to ten years in prison. It was around this time that Major Esterhazy confessed while in exile that he had been the military officer who had committed the treason Dreyfus was condemned for. President Loubet pardoned Dreyfus later that same year. In 1906 Dreyfus was finally declared innocent by the court, restored to the army and given honours. He fought in the First World War along with is son, Pierre. The whole ordeal brought to light extreme anti-Semitism in France.
The Dreyfus Affair was just as sensational in Quebec as it was in France. French-Canadian newspapers sided with the anti-Dreyfusards. This event created such a large amount of anti-Jewish feeling that the Jewish community of Quebec felt it necessary to come together to create a defence organization.
The image is of a famous cartoon that shows a family sitting down to dinner. One of the family members says “Above all, lets not discuss the Dreyfus affair.” At the bottom, under the image of the family fighting, it reads “they have discussed it.” This image shows just how deeply the Dreyfus affair divided the French. Click here to go to SFU\'s teacher resource on how to use critical thinking to deconstruct politcial cartoons.
The Balfour declaration committed the British government to support a Jewish homeland in Palestine. At this time Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire which was a member of the Central Powers in World War One and thus, an enemy of Britain. A Jewish legion was organized to fight for the British in return for Britain to recognize the rights of Jewish people in Palestine and permit free immigration.
Unfortunately, the Balfour Declaration was not the only promise Britain made concerning Palestine in order to obtain support for the First World War. The Hashemites, a powerful family in Arabia, coordinated with the British to carry out acts of sabotage against Turkey. In return, the British promised Arab independence and a kingdom under Hashemite rule.
The British promised the Arabs and the Jewish people the same bit of land as their country. Britain’s solution was to divide Palestine to create the emirate Transjordan which they gave to the Hashemite emir Abdallah. The Arab nationalists were not satisfied with this solution and lobbied for the annulment of the Balfour Declaration.
The Russian Revolution started in February of 1917. It all began with people demonstrating on the street asking for bread and peace with Germany. The demonstrations escalated to violence. Many of the armed forces refused to shoot the crowd and some even joined them. It was now a revolution. The Czar signed an act of abdication on the 2nd of March, 1917 making the revolution a successful one. A provisional government was set up following the Czar’s abdication but things did not improve much for the people of Russia. In October of 1917 the Bolsheviks staged a coup and took over government. Thus the communist regime began its rule.
The consequence of the Russian Revolution for Canada was a period known as the first “Red Scare.” During this time foreigners were often viewed as potentially revolutionary. This caused Canada to be reluctant to accept immigrants with strong alien ideologies (including Jewish people).
The stock market crash in the USA occurred in 1929 when stock prices had risen to four times the value they had been in 1921. Reasonable assessments of future earning potentials could not justify the high prices of stocks so when stock prices began to gradually decrease investors lost confidence and the stock market bubble burst.
The crash in the stock market led to the Great Depression in the USA. Other causes were the decline in consumer demand, financial panics and poor government policies. This depression spread all over the world thanks to the gold standard which linked almost all currencies in a network of fixed exchange rates. USA and Europe were the hardest hit by the depression which lasted from 1929 to about 1939.
In Canada the Great Depression was a factor in the immigration policy that shut out millions of desperate Jewish people when Hitler was rising to power. Canada had always maintained immigration policies that were economically motivated. Following the Great Depression Canada tightened her immigration policies; in 1930 legislation that only allowed immigrants with enough capital to create and maintain a farm in Canada was passed.
The Second World War began when Britain and France declared war on Germany following Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939. Germany along with Italy and Japan formed the Axis. Britain and her commonwealth countries (including Canada), France and eventually Russia and America formed the Allies. Canada contributed over one million soldiers of which more than 45,000 died and 55,000 were wounded.
A leading cause of WWII was the harsh conditions that followed WWI, both those imposed by the Treaty of Versailles– the forced payment of repatriations to the Allies – and those created by the Great Depression. The policy of appeasement by the League of Nations was another major factor. The League failed to take action when Japan invaded Manchuria, then when Italy invaded Abyssinia and finally when Hitler took Czechoslovakia.
The Holocaust, in which 6 million Jewish people were killed, was undertaken by the Nazi regime during WWII. Jewish people were proclaimed enemies as were the Sinti, Roma (commonly referred to as Gypsies), homosexuals and disabled people. Before the war started anti-Semitic legislation stripped Jewish people of their rights and they suffered violent attacks. When the war began the aim of the Nazis was to expel the Jewish population from their holdings which quickly became most of the Continent. Jewish people were put into overcrowded ghettos, forced labour and concentration camps.
By 1942 the Nazis created the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” which was to exterminate all Jewish people within their reach. Networks of camps for the purposes of mass murder were created. Many of the camps had permanent gas chambers where millions of Jewish people were killed.
In Canada the Jewish population lobbied the government to open its doors to the Jewish refugees of Europe. They were not successful in part because at first the Great Depression had stopped almost all immigration to Canada, then there was vocal anti-Jewish sentiment from Quebec politicians, many politicians worried they would lose votes by accepting Jewish refugees and the government feared that Britain and America’s resettlement plan for the Jewish refugees was to send the majority of them to Canada. The result was that from 1933 when the Nazi’s rose to power until 1945 Canada took fewer than 5,000 Jewish refugees compared to the USA’s 200,000; Palestine’s 125,000; Britain’s 70,000; Argentina’s 50,000; Brazil’s 27,000; China’s 25,000; and Bolivia and Chile’s 14,000 each.
Click here to listen to a story of survival from a Jewish member of the BC community.
Following the Second World War tensions arose between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. This period, from about 1946 to 1991, is known as the Cold War; it was characterized by military tension, proxy wars and economic competition between the communist world (the Soviet Union and its allies) and the western world (the USA and its allies which included Canada).
At the beginning of the Cold War, in the late 1940s and early1950s, a fear of communism and of the infiltration of communist spies spread through the USA. This fear was taken to new levels by Senator McCarthy. McCarthy’s actions led to a period known as the second “Red Scare” which has been likened to a witch-hunt. Particular targets were intellectuals and those in the entertainment industry. Some of the victims were Jewish but they were persecuted because of their connections to Communism not Judaism. McCarthy’s reign of terror ended when he attempted to find communists amongst the American army which turned popular sentiment against him.
In Canada the second Red Scare occurred to a lesser degree than in the USA. It began with Igor Gouzenko, a man who worked in the Soviet Union intelligence who exposed a Soviet spy ring in Canada in 1945. This led to the RCMP quietly and systematically investigating many Canadians. This never took on the same frenzy that McCarthyism did.
Following the Second World War, Britain gave up trying to solve the problem of what to do with Palestine and handed the issue over to the United Nations. In 1947 the UN voted to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. On May 14, 1948 the state of Israel was created.
The following day Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt with some support of Saudi Arabia and Yemen invaded Israel. This became known as the war of Independence. The war ended a year later in March 1949. At the end of the conflict, Israel was in control of more territory than they had been given in the partition plan. Israel now had control of Galilee, the coastal strip, the Negev, and the road to Jerusalem as well as the western part of the city. The war created many Arab refugees who fled to surrounding countries. These countries did not absorb them into their populations but rather set up refugee camps and promised to return them to what was now Israel.
Three hundred Canadian veterans volunteered to fight for Israel in the War of Independence. Of the three hundred Canadians, twenty seven of them were from the Vancouver Jewish community. Ralph Moster, one of the Vancouverites, died in 1948 while fighting for Israel. Ralph had served with the Canadian Air Force from 1943-45 as a sergeant pilot. Once the Second World War ended, Moster joined the Israel Air Force as commander of the Negeve Squadron as he felt it was his duty to aid in Israel’s fight for Independence. Moster rose to be the Commanding Officer of Tel Aviv Airport. He was killed in a seaplane crash in Lake Kinneret at the age of twenty-two.
To read the article featured in the picture click here.
The collapse of the Soviet Union took place between 1989 and 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, opened up the country to freedom of speech, elections and changes in the economy. The Cold War changed the Soviet Union’s outlook leading to the idea that individual countries had the right to decide their own political and economic systems. East and Central Europe abandoned their communist regimes. Finally in 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved into fifteen independent countries. The dissolution of one of the world’s greatest powers occurred peacefully.
The collapse started a major migration of Jewish people as they feared the instability of the area would lead to violence against Jewish people just as it had in the past. Immigration was mainly to Israel and the USA. The Canadian Jewish population increased by 14 percent between 1981 and 1991; one in four of these immigrants came from the Soviet Union.
One person was killed and five were wounded when a shooting occurred at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. A man entered the Federation by gunpoint and explained that he was angry with Israel and then started shooting. The man spoke to the police on the phone and stated that it was a hostage situation. The shooter said he wanted them to get their weapons out of Israel. When the police arrived the shooter gave himself up without resistance.
The Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver created a Security Committee in response to the shooting in Seattle as well as increased tensions due to Israel’s war with Hezbollah.