|
November 7, 2008
Jewish veterans remember past
The future of the Royal Canadian Legion is looking uncertain, as its membership ages.
RON FRIEDMAN
Every year on Nov. 11, Ralph Jackson attends the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph in Victory Square in Downtown Vancouver and lays a wreath on behalf of Jewish War Veterans of Canada. Along with Phil Weinstein and Bill Geisdrecht, he represents the members of Shalom Branch 178 of the Royal Canadian Legion.
After the city hall ceremony, they, along with a four or five other legion members, drive to Louis Brier Home and Hospital and hold an additional memorial service.
Times are tough at Shalom Branch. The aging members are becoming less active and mobile and it's becoming harder to keep up attendance.
"There were lots more social functions in the past and we've had difficulty maintaining that, but we still try to maintain a few things with respect to trying to entertain the more senior veterans that we have," said Weinstein, the branch commander. The activities of the group are limited to monthly meetings and the rare social function, featuring things like a darts tournament or the occasional concert. "We had a group of Métis dancers come by and perform for us a while ago," recalled Weinstein.
Dwindling membership is a problem shared by all legion branches and, in response, the legion has extended its constituency, initially to the family members of veterans and, more recently, to all Canadian citizens who wish to join. Today, Shalom Branch has roughly 120 members, only 15 of whom are actual veterans. "We're facing a bit of an uphill battle as far as membership," said Weinstein mournfully.
This year, Weinstein and the others will be receiving a boost from a special guest. Maj.-Gen. Ed Fitch, one of the Canadian military's highest-ranking Jewish officers, with a distinguished career, spanning 40 years in the service, including combat postings in former Yugoslavia, Haiti and Kosovo, will be joining them for the Remembrance Day service. Fitch, who acknowledges the problem of diminishing membership in the legion, chooses to take a different perspective on the matter. As he asked a friend at a recent legion event in Calgary, "Would you rather live in a country where the number of veterans is diminishing or in a country that renews its veterans every day?"
Fitch's comment raises the point that Canada is currently at war and that, for many Canadian families, this Remembrance Day will be a painful reminder of their recent losses.
Both Fitch and Weinstein see a real potential for the legion to become a place in which older veterans and the more recent returnees come together and help each other, where the younger generations learn from the experiences of their elders.
"We've discussed battle fatigue and different psychological problems that they know about now, that some of the senior veterans suffered, but they suffered in silence," said Weinstein. "Some of them never spoke of the hardships they went through and the atrocities they saw that scarred them for life. They just never spoke of them. They dealt with those issues in their own way, sometimes not successfully. Nowadays, the government and the armed forces are trying to deal with the returning soldiers and we're sort of waiting. We'll be here and available to them if they want to come and join us."
Fitch agreed: "The potential is there, but getting them to do it is tough. Take a 29-year-old ... you're talking about him relating to his grandfather."
While he sees commonalities among all military veterans, from the Jewish angle, Fitch makes a distinction between the soldiers who went off to fight in the Second World War and those who are currently fighting in Afghanistan.
"Jewish Canadians volunteered at higher rates than the average population [during the Second World War]. To a degree, it was in an effort to save Jews. That's not the case in Afghanistan; they're going for other reasons. There isn't the same draw for Jews to go specifically as Jews."
Fitch is somewhat of an expert on the topic of returning veterans. Aside from his many years in the service, he recently helped complete a project commemorating the Jewish veterans who came from Vancouver Island. In a joint effort organized by Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria, Fitch and others put together a book titled Valor and Duty Honoring Jewish Veterans of World War II, as well as a small exhibit. The book was released in a ceremony in Victoria last year. Among those featured in it were Fitch's father, Burton Fitch, and his wife's father, Sam Paul.
Reading through the testimonies – oral histories collected by volunteers from war veterans – at the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia, a pattern quickly emerges. Canadian Jews felt that they had to go to war for grand purposes. As Harold Zlotnik, who joined the air force and went on to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross, said in his statements to the archive: "For me, it wasn't a matter of the glamor of getting involved in the military or anything like that. It was an awareness that this represented a big fight for the Jewish people and for all people and the whole Nazi movement had to be stopped." Similar sentiments were spoken by Leo Silverman, a Polish immigrant who bribed a sergeant in order to pass his eye exam so he could enlist. He was later wounded, shortly after the assault on Calais, and awarded with numerous medals.
"When I heard the war was going on in Europe and I still had many relatives in Poland, I was quite worried about them and so I felt it was my duty to go and join the army and help fight Hitler's Nazism. So I went to the Old Vancouver Hotel – that's where the recruiting office was – and the recruiting office told me that the Westminster regiment needs recruit and that I should join the Westminster regiment," recalled Harry Herman, who fought on the frontlines in Italy.
"One of the reasons I believe that we should keep this [the legion] going is so we can hopefully have a place as a service club for the returning vets who will be much junior to those we have now," said Weinstein. "You pass on that torch, it goes along with the slogan 'Lest we forget.' We should never forget what my grandfather, my ancestors, did to save this country and freedom and our way of life, and that's what this is all about."
Remembrance at UBC
The University of British Columbia Remembrance Day ceremony will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 11, at 10:50 a.m., in the War Memorial Gym. It will be an opportunity to honor and remember all those who served in times of war, military conflict and peace.
In the UBC War Memorial Gym, there is a plaque on which the name of former King David High School principal Perry Seidelman's uncle is inscribed. Edward Joseph Seidelman was an editor of the 1915 UBC annual and he left that year with the 196th University Battalion to join the fighting in Europe. He was eventually transferred to the 46th Battalion and it was with this force that Pte. Seidelman was killed in action on Oct. 26, 1917, at the age of 20. His story, as well as those of other Jews who fought in the First World War, can be found in the November 1995 issue of the Jewish Historical Society of British Columbia's The Scribe.
This year, 2008, marks the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War. It is also the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For more information about the UBC Remembrance Day service, visit the website http://www.ceremonies.ubc.ca/ceremonies/memorial/remembrance.html.
^TOP
|
