Pat Johnson – Page 32

Jewish war brides talk

At the University of British Columbia on Nov. 21, Prof. Robin Judd will speak on What’s Love Got to Do With It? Jewish War Brides and North American Soldier Husbands after the Second World War. (photo from Robin Judd)

Prof. Robin Judd noticed that a significant number of the earliest Holocaust memoirs written by women were penned by “war brides” who had married American, Canadian or British soldiers.

In the course of teaching about the Holocaust at Ohio State University, the coincidence struck her and, as happens in research, led her onto a new topic. She is nearing completion on a book about the experiences of Jewish women – and a few men – in Europe and North Africa who married Allied service personnel and moved to Canada, the United States or Britain. She will give a guest lecture on the subject at the University of British Columbia next week and the public is welcome to attend.

The lecture is titled What’s Love Got to Do With It? Jewish War Brides and North American Soldier Husbands after the Second World War, and Judd told the Independent that love certainly played a key role, but some of the other factors at play also interest her.

“What prompts individuals from radically different cultures, who may not necessarily speak the same language, what prompts them to create relationships with one another and long-lasting relationships, relationships that are going to result in marriage and then bring the civilians to Canada, Britain or the United States?” she asked.

Most of the soldiers that Judd is studying were Jewish themselves, though there are exceptions to the rule.

In some cases, the wives would arrive in the new country before or otherwise apart from their new husbands or fiancés. An entire infrastructure was in place to accommodate and integrate them.

“The war brides, particularly if you come to the United States or to Canada as a war bride, first you live with other war brides at least temporarily in a kind of war bride home or war bride camp and you travel on a war bride ship and there are particular Red Cross workers who teach English and show films and cooking classes,” she said.

If the fiancés or husbands were not yet decommissioned or were traveling with their units, the brides may have found themselves in the position of living with their new in-laws.

“These were not the spouses they were planning for their sons,” Judd comments. “And all of a sudden here you have this woman show up. You are processing stories that you are hearing about the war and all of a sudden here comes this person and you might not be able to communicate, you might not have a shared language, you might not know how to even ask questions about what this person had experienced.”

Feeling isolated and foreign, some of these women used the opportunity to express their experiences privately, to themselves, in writing.

“Some of the women that I’ve spoken to have told me that they used that time to write out their story, to put it to paper, because they needed to kind of get it out and there was no one with whom they could talk, literally,” she said. “But then, as they began to create networks, make new connections, maybe by that point their now-husbands have returned to Canada, Britain or the U.S., a number of them tell me that they then destroyed them.”

By an apparent coincidence, though, Judd concluded that it was disproportionately the women who had married soldiers who were among the first to publish English-language Holocaust memoir narratives for general readers in the 1970s and ’80s. She has a theory about this, but admits she could be wrong: these may have been some of the first women who were asked to speak about their early life and Holocaust experiences to Jewish women’s groups, federations and other community audiences, acclimating them to become among the first to put them on paper for general readers.

“But, again, I could be completely wrong,” she said.

Judd’s lecture is supported by a Holocaust education fund in UBC’s department of history to support undergraduate education on the Holocaust. The fund supports a biannual lecture, alternating years with the Rudolf Vrba Memorial Lecture, and is incorporated into an undergraduate course, History of the Holocaust, taught by Prof. Richard Menkis, who is also chair of the committee that manages the fund. The public is welcome to attend on Thursday, Nov. 21, 5-6:15 p.m., at Buchanan D217 at UBC.

Historic JCC-Fed agreement

A rendering of the development that is planned to replace the current Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. (image from JCCGV)

A recently signed agreement is a significant next step in the largest infrastructure project in the history of British Columbia’s Jewish community. The deal is expected to create a new Jewish community centre, as well as at least 300 rental housing units and larger, renewed facilities for many communal institutions, replacing the existing, almost 60-year-old community centre.

A memorandum of understanding between the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver (JCC) and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver was signed last month. The agreement will likely see the land owned by the JCC transferred to a new community-wide agency. According to a joint statement by the two organizations, the proposed new 200,000-square-foot “recreational, cultural and community centre [will include] new childcare spaces, more services for seniors, an expanded space for the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, a new theatre and more.” At least 15 not-for-profit community organizations are anticipated to be housed there, as well as updated and enlarged facilities for arts and culture, aquatics, and fitness programs. Mixed-use rental housing units included in the plan are expected to be offered at or below market value and be open to everyone.

The project will advance based on a collaborative fundraising initiative. A campaign goal has not been announced.

“This agreement is an important initial step toward acting upon the community’s vision for a revitalized JCC that would become a legacy for the Jewish community and the city,” Salomon Casseres, president of the JCC board, said in the statement. “Our board is excited to partner with Jewish Federation. We believe that this collaboration puts the project on a strong foundation for success, from a community, financial and governance perspective.”

“An opportunity like this comes along perhaps once in a generation, so we are very proud to be working closely with the JCC on this historic project,” Alex Cristall, Jewish Federation’s board chair, said in the statement. “Jewish Federation takes a broad, long-term view of the sustainability, growth and evolution of the local Jewish community, and we believe that this project will create a strong core that will ultimately allow us to increase our reach and our impact.”

Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation, told the Independent that the collaboration is a “big win” for the community.

“Federation has always been a proponent for the concept of working together on projects that have an impact that’s beyond the reach of one agency and we are thrilled that the JCC agrees with us that this is one of those projects,” he said. “It absolutely should be common in all cities.… For me, it’s best practice.”

The new JCC will strengthen the entire community, he said, adding that the impacts will reach far beyond the Oakridge neighbourhood.

“We are not just creating a strong future for that 41st and Oak corridor, the Vancouver Jewish community, but I believe we’re creating a strong future for the community across the Lower Mainland as a whole,” Shanken said, expressing his gratitude to the JCC and its leadership.

“I think the JCC has shown immense foresight and courage in coming together with us, to have the openness to work through the challenges and opportunities that exist in partnership, and I believe that this partnership will glean really great results for the Jewish community as a whole,” he said.

Eldad Goldfarb, executive director of the JCC, said working together hand in hand is the best way forward and the partnership is a natural one. The collaboration between the JCC and Federation is the largest partnership, but is part of a broader engagement process, he added.

“The master planning process of this legacy community project has involved an extensive engagement effort by the JCC, reaching out and having conversations with more than 30 Jewish community organizations, many stakeholders, donors and community members,” said Goldfarb. “The JCC, as we know it today, is home to 15 different Jewish community organizations and the new redevelopment might increase these collaborations opportunities.”

Discussions about the partnership between the two organizations have always been very collaborative, open and in good faith, Goldfarb said.

“This project is about creating a JCC for the future of the community, with more and better childcare, seniors, wellness, arts, culture and education state-of-the-art spaces, but is not limited to only that,” he said. “Our vision is to create an innovative community site which will include a brand new J, as well as a welcoming and collaborative home for many other community organizations and, of course, the much-needed large rental affordable housing towers.”

Vancouver City Council unanimously approved the JCC site redevelopment plan in September 2018. Several major steps remain in the design and planning process, as well as the raising of the millions of dollars required to complete it.

Danger in remaining silent

Marsha Lederman (photo by John Lehmann/Globe and Mail)

A few years ago, Marsha Lederman went with her mother, two sisters and a cousin on the adult portion of the March of the Living, which included a walk between the two main camps of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.

“The march from Auschwitz to Birkenau was somber and sorrowful, but it was also so empowering,” she recalled at the annual High Holidays Cemetery Service at Schara Tzedeck Cemetery in New Westminster Oct. 6. “We were marching with a statement to the world and a comforting message to the souls whose lives had ended so brutally on those grounds: ‘We are here, we are still living, we are multiplying, we remember you.’”

The family group proceeded to Radom, the town outside Warsaw where Lederman’s mother had grown up. The man who lived in the apartment where she had lived allowed them in and Lederman’s mother recounted her family’s years there.

“It was joyous,” Lederman said. “We were still on a high when we visited the memorial for the Radom Jews killed in the Holocaust. As I recall, it was in a fairly large square and seemed a little neglected. We were looking at this lonely memorial, the five of us women, when a group of, I would say, teenage boys began chanting something nearby. I don’t speak Polish, so I couldn’t understand what they were saying. But I did understand one thing: ‘Auschwitz-Birkenau.’ I don’t think they were offering their condolences.”

She reflected on the way she responded in that moment.

“We hurried away and said nothing. It was a safe thing to do, for sure. But, if that happened to me today, I would not walk away. I am done with walking away. Would I have put us in danger if I had turned around and confronted those boys? Maybe. But I know now that the real danger is in remaining silent.”

Lederman is the Vancouver-based Western arts correspondent for the Globe and Mail. Her father was born in Lodz, Poland, on erev Yom Kippur 1919. Her mother was born in Radom, Poland, in 1925. All four of their parents were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz and Treblinka, as was Lederman’s father’s sister and little brother, and her mother’s little brother.

Lederman’s parents met in Germany after liberation and had one daughter there before moving to Canada, where they had two more daughters.

Lederman reflected on recent antisemitic incidents in North America and Europe, as well as her own encounters with antisemitism and racism, including a harrowing verbal attack on an Asian woman on the Skytrain at rush-hour, an incident in which Lederman was the only person to intervene.

“We have a duty to speak up,” she said. “We have a responsibility. This is our inheritance. I never had a bubbe or zadie to hug me or spoil me on my birthday or cook chicken soup for me. There’s nothing in my home that was theirs. I did not receive a single heirloom. But I did receive an inheritance – a duty to protect others from hate…. That is my inheritance and that is their legacy. Enough. Never again.”

She recalled being stunned during an interview with famed Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog, who died last month. Chatting after the main interview, Lederman asked the German-Canadian if he had experienced anti-German sentiment when he arrived here after the war. He launched into a discourse on the “so-called Holocaust” and said Jews died in the camps mostly because of lice and because Allied bombings prevented food from getting to them. Lederman agonized over whether to expose the admired photographer, eventually writing the story, for which she has been subjected to a range of criticism.

“Well, I have had enough,” she said. “And I’m going to fight to tell those stories and expose antisemitism and Holocaust denial and racism. I am not going to be quiet anymore. I think of all that was lost in the gas chambers; all the lives, of course, but also all the potential. With those millions of lives extinguished, what was lost with them? Poems were never written, beautiful artworks that were never painted, the cure for cancer, for Parkinson’s, the answer to the climate crisis?

“It was not just the people who were murdered that the world lost. It was all of their descendants and all of their descendants and all of that potential.… I talk about this because of what this leaves on our shoulders. I interviewed a Nisga’a poet, Jordan Abel, and he used a term to describe himself that I have adopted. He calls himself an intergenerational survivor of residential schools, which makes me an intergenerational survivor of Auschwitz. I do not take this lightly. With my parents’ survival came a hefty responsibility on me and on all of us who are descendants.”

At the service, Jack Micner, who led the ceremony and is also a member of the second generation, outlined a litany of antisemitic incidents and comments in Europe and North America in recent weeks.

“I suspect that those of our parents resting here in this cemetery would be furious to see what’s going on across the world,” he said. “We have to continue doing the type of work that VHEC [Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre] is doing in as many ways as we can think … it falls on us, because nobody’s going to do it for us.”

Rabbi Shlomo Estrin reflected on the loss of Chassidic communities during the Holocaust. Cantor Yaacov Orzech chanted El Maleh Rachamim.

Names were read of community members who have passed since the last High Holidays and a moment of silence was observed for the six million.

The Mourner’s Kaddish was recited by Jeremy Berger, a grandson of a Holocaust survivor. After the service ended, the Mourner’s Kaddish was also recited at the Holocaust Memorial in the cemetery.

The annual event is presented by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre with Congregation Schara Tzedeck and the Jewish War Veterans, and with support from the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Vancouver.

Affordability, inclusion focus

CIJA and SUCCESS held a candidates forum Sept. 22. (photo from SUCCESS)

Pocketbook issues and cultural concerns topped the agenda at an election forum put together by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and the multicultural service organization SUCCESS.

Representatives of four federal parties convened on Sept. 22 in Chinatown to address issues ranging from housing affordability and employment to community security, immigration and inclusion.

“Affordability is the key question every party is facing right now,” said Zach Segal, Conservative candidate in Vancouver Granville. He said his party’s plan to give tax cuts to the lowest income bracket would put more money in pockets.

Don Davies, New Democratic Party incumbent in Vancouver Kingsway, noted that about half of Canadians are $200 away from insolvency and that, for every dollar an average Canadian earns, they owe $1.77. Davies said the former Conservative government eliminated funding for social housing while the Liberals promised to return it and didn’t.

“If Liberal and Conservative policies have been so beneficial to low-income Canadians, why has income inequality only grown every year for the last 30 years?” asked Davies.

Harjit Sajjan, Liberal incumbent in Vancouver South and minister of national defence in the last government, said the Liberal promise to raise the first-time homebuyers’ incentive to apply to homes priced as high as $789,000 reflects the reality of markets in high-priced cities.

The Green party’s representative, Lawrence Taylor, who is running against Davies in the Kingsway riding, said Canada’s immigration policy needs to address changes in the economy. “We will probably need more people with different skills as our economy develops into a knowledge economy,” he said.

All major federal parties are in general agreement about the number of immigrants Canada should accept, and Liberal and Conservative governments have each raised the base annual immigration numbers. Only the People’s Party of Canada, which was not included in the forum, is arguing for lower immigration.

Davies said NDP policy is that immigration should be set at one percent of population and that reuniting families should be a priority for Canada’s immigration system. Family class immigrants, who represented 40% of all new Canadians in the 1990s, have fallen to about 20%, he said.

“Family class is the single most important class of immigrants because they are coming into a supported structure,” said Davies.

Davies also criticized Canada for continuing to treat “Donald Trump’s United States” as a safe third country for refugees, “even though he’s caging children and separating parents from their kids. Yet we still regard that country as a safe third country for refugees and asylum-seekers? I don’t think so.”

The New Democrat also called for more clarity and sensitivity of language from leaders, especially those who use terms like “illegal refugees.”

“Jews that were fleeing from Germany and making their way out of there, they were not jumping any queue. They were fleeing for their lives,” said Davies. “To even use terminology that suggests that refugees that are seeking safety are, in some way, illegal or are breaking the rules is wrong and we need to change that language because language matters.”

Sajjan, who came to Canada at the age of 5, said it is crucial to ensure that new Canadians are well-supported, so that they can quickly become successful in society. He linked immigration to the economy, saying that representatives of Microsoft had told him that they invested in Vancouver operations in part because Canada’s immigration policies make skilled labour accessible.

Segal called for better credential recognition, improved language training and more private sponsorships of refugees.

On the issue of credential recognition, Davies quipped that the back seat of a taxi is the best place in Canada to have a heart attack because of the number of foreign-trained doctors driving cabs in this country.

On community security, an issue of heightened concern to Jews after recent acts of violence around the world, Sajjan called it “ridiculous” that congregants at a synagogue need security to feel safe and said that leadership is needed to stand against hatred and intolerance.

Green candidate Taylor said his party does not have a policy on the subject.

Asked about Justin Trudeau’s brownface and blackface incidents, Sajjan said it has opened a discussion Canadians should have had a long time ago. He said his father told him they didn’t address issues like this in years past because they were confronting much greater racism, including violence. In one of the few flashpoints in the forum, Sajjan then turned the issue to comments made years ago by Conservative leader Andrew Scheer condemning same-sex marriage.

Segal called Trudeau’s blackface incidents “open mockery” and dubbed attacks on Scheer and other Conservatives “character assassinations.” Response to the incidents represent “rank hypocrisy,” said Segal. “Can you imagine if Andrew Scheer was caught wearing this type of costume three times?” he asked.

Taylor, the Green candidate, said of Trudeau: “Trust has been broken and that will be difficult to mend.”

Election views diverge

The Independent spoke with people in the Jewish community to gauge attitudes as the federal election approaches. What we found was a diversity of views and a lack of consensus.

An informal focus group of residents at the Weinberg Residence raised issues of out-of-pocket expenses for medical treatments and a lack of available doctors.

“You lose your doctor, you can’t get another one,” said one senior voter.

There was not great enthusiasm for any of the party leaders. One participant said she had lost respect for Liberal leader Justin Trudeau long before the recent brownface and blackface issue emerged.

“I was disappointed in him way back when he went to India and there was this whole thing of dressing up in Indian costumes. I felt it wasn’t very statesmanlike.”

“I feel that he’s had his chance and I don’t want to vote for him because he showed us what he can do. I don’t think he’s got what it takes,” said another voter.

“I expected nothing from Trudeau and I got it,” said another.

But there was no groundswell of support for Conservative leader Andrew Scheer.

“I’m disappointed,” said one. “I haven’t heard anything that’s promising.”

Some voters said NDP leader Jagmeet Singh comes across as sincere, but one said he has a lot of repair work to do with the Jewish community after his party’s positions against Israel in the past.

Elizabeth May, the Green leader, was viewed positively, but not seen as prime minister material.

“She’s very good at her subject, but I can’t envisage her really understanding what’s going on in the economy, in foreign affairs,” one resident said.

Among more than a dozen participants, the vast majority had a positive view of their incumbent MP, Jody Wilson-Raybould.

“I think she deserves better than she’s had,” said one person, while a Conservative supporter said she wishes Wilson-Raybould was running for her party, because she’d like to vote for her.

A show of hands indicated well more than half are undecided about who to vote for.

“Everybody’s confused,” said one, to laughter all around.

* * *

Alice Sundberg, director of operations and housing development for Tikva Housing Society, would like to see the federal government get back into funding nonprofit housing.

“We think that there is a really significant role for the federal government in making rental housing more affordable,” she said. Rather than subsidies to renters, which go into the pockets of landlords and don’t create new housing, she would like to see either capital grants to reduce mortgages for nonprofit or co-op housing, thus reducing the rental costs, or ongoing operating subsidies to organizations like hers that develop new housing.

“We don’t have enough supply,” said Sundberg. “Back in the ’90s, when the federal government withdrew from funding new affordable housing, it was really the beginning of our homelessness crisis.”

Housing is also a topic for Eldad Goldfarb, executive director of the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. The centre’s redevelopment will include at least 300 units of affordable rental housing. His team has spoken to many federal officials, including MPs, but, so far, he said, “No commitments, no confirmations, lots of good feedback and great understanding of the project, support for it, but nothing has translated into actual commitments, funding, promises, nothing of that sort.”

Support for the housing component might include financing from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, rather than grants, though he hopes for federal cash for the new JCC building. He credited the federal government for stepping up with funding for security infrastructure for communities at risk, but added there is always need for more.

* * *

The rise of hate-motivated rhetoric and violence leads some community leaders to call for more federal action and leadership.

“With the rise of antisemitism, racism and far-right extremism, particularly in the online space, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre would welcome a comprehensive strategy to tackle hate in all its forms,” said Nina Krieger, executive director of the VHEC.

Russ Klein, principal of King David High School, would like to hear party leaders and candidates address how they are demonstrating moral and ethical leadership that creates trust and inspires Canadians, especially young people.

“How will they work to ease a society which seems quick to feel fear and seems overly stressed and anxious?” asked Klein. “I want to know how they will support a kinder, more inclusive society that offers hope and opportunity for all but especially to young people and to the most vulnerable in our society. How will they work to maintain affordable housing, livable wages and allow people to manage a balanced lifestyle in cities like Vancouver, where young families cannot afford to live in their current community? We live in extremely concerning times globally and I want Canada to lead in decreasing world tensions – how will they do that?”

* * *

Similar broad topics arose among a handful of University of British Columbia students who met at Hillel House to discuss issues that are important to them. All agreed that there has not been enough discussion of foreign affairs and there is a lack of substantive difference between the parties on issues like immigration.

“I don’t see any candidate that has a clear foreign policy vision, even though I think Chrystia Freeland is, personally, a great minister of foreign affairs,” said Adam Yosef Dobrer, a third-year political science student who is volunteering on Zach Segal’s Conservative campaign in Vancouver Granville.

Dobrer also wants Canada to return to the Conservative policy of defunding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which he called the greatest obstacle to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

“In the last four years, I found it very difficult to understand where Canada as a nation lies in foreign affairs,” said Nika Perel, a fourth-year psychology student from Ontario who plans to vote Conservative. She credited the previous Conservative government with more clarity on Israel and Palestine and on Russia and Ukraine. “Stephen Harper made it very clear that he took a position supporting Ukraine.”

Jake Reznik, a nursing student with an undergraduate degree in kinesiology who remains an undecided voter, said Canada is not adequately standing up to China over its treatment of the Muslim-minority Uygher population or its other human rights violations. He added: “There is a lot of influence that the Chinese government does have in Canada that goes under-recognized.”

Matt Perzow, an NDP supporter who plans to vote strategically for Joyce Murray, the Liberal candidate in Vancouver Quadra, to prevent a Conservative government, emphasized health care, including mental health services. Defending Canadian values like multiculturalism and care for the most vulnerable are also things he wants to see party leaders prioritize.

All the students agreed that supporting Israel is an important consideration in their vote, but also said it will not be the deciding factor.

“I wouldn’t vote for any party that I thought would jeopardize the future of the Jewish people, whether it’s in Canada, in Israel or in another place,” said Perzow. “I’m not voting for somebody because of that issue, but, if I thought that something compromised the well-being of the Jewish people, I wouldn’t support them.”

Dobrer, whose family migrated to Canada from Israel when he was an infant because of the Second Intifada, said he has a “very resonant emotional connection” to Israel “but I am a Canadian first.” He is concerned about some election candidates, including Green party MP Paul Manly, who Dobrer says has a “long and sordid history of antisemitism and 9/11 ‘trutherism’ and delving into conspiracy theories.” (After being elected in a by-election this year, Manly denied he supports 9/11 conspiracies after the CBC reported on statements he had made in 2007 and 2011.)

The students all agreed that the environment and climate change are top issues for them and their peers, but expressed nearly universal hopelessness that anything substantive would change.

“I have no doubt that it will not be addressed,” said Reznik. “I know personally I’m not going to be willing to sacrifice my own standard of living and, at the same time, I think it is tremendously insulting on my part to tell someone else that they can’t attain my standard of living that we have here.”

“A lot of people are standing up and screaming about things, but they’re not going to do anything about it,” said Perel.

A hint of hope came from Dobrer: “From the government, I’m very skeptical. But from young intellectual minds, from the not-for-profit sector, from the private sector, every day there is more and more innovation, technological advances and more intellectual capital devoted to dealing with climate change.”

Compassion over hate

Tony McAleer, who helped found the organization Life After Hate, spoke at Congregation Beth Tikvah last month, along with fellow Life After Hate member Brad Galloway. (photo by Pat Johnson)

A former leader in Canada’s far-right white nationalist movements says targets of white supremacist extremism should not be expected to “hug a Nazi.” But, as difficult as it may be, seeing the humanity in everyone and finding compassion for people who lack compassion may be key to reducing the problem of racist extremism.

Tony McAleer was a member of the so-called White Aryan Resistance and his early embrace of technology and the internet helped propel that movement into the digital age. He later helped found the organization Life After Hate and now works with others who want to leave the neo-Nazi movement. He shared his personal history at Beth Tikvah synagogue, in Richmond, on Sept. 8. He has also spoken at other synagogues and venues in recent weeks.

“While we condemn the activities, while we condemn the ideology, we don’t condemn the human being,” McAleer said of his organization’s strategy. “It’s coming from that place of compassion.… The hardest thing to do in the world is to have compassion for people who don’t have compassion. We do that as harm reduction – hurt people hurt people, and we can bring them back from that place of hurt so they don’t do it anymore.”

McAleer grew up in a stable, comfortable Dunbar home, which contradicts some stereotypes, he said. He attended private Catholic school but lost respect for authority figures when he caught his father with a woman who was not McAleer’s mother.

“Can anyone remember the day when God fell off the pedestal?” he asked. His grades fell, his behaviour deteriorated and he was regularly sent to the principal’s office for canings.

“When I look back on it, I don’t think that I’ve ever felt more powerless than I did in that office time after time after time after time,” he said. “It didn’t make my grades go up. I continued to tune out.… I went from listening to Elton John and Queen to the Clash and the Sex Pistols. I was angry and the music I listened to was angry. It eventually led me down the road into the punk scene and later into the skinhead scene. And, in the skinhead scene, I found an outlet for my anger.”

Ideology is secondary, at best, as an attractant to racist groups, he said.

“What we find in the young men and women who are drawn to these movements is there’s an underlying rage, underlying vulnerability that makes the ideology so seductive,” he said. “I want to be very clear here. I’m not for a minute blaming anything I did on my childhood. Everything I did I chose to do and I take accountability for that and I always will. I work for Life After Hate, do things like this to pay back for that.”

He shares the story of his early life as an explanation, not as a justification, he said.

“What I found in the movement, what I found from being a skinhead – I found a sense of power, a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning,” McAleer said. “I got power when I felt powerless. I got attention when I felt invisible and I got brotherhood, camaraderie and acceptance when I felt unlovable.… Those are the vulnerabilities that make the ideologies so seductive. If you have those in a healthy way, the ideology doesn’t make sense to you. But, for somebody craving those things, the ideology becomes something powerful, a false seduction.”

When he was 21 years old, McAleer’s girlfriend gave birth to a baby girl.

“For the first time, I connected to another human being. Up until that point, I was completely cut off from my heart, I was completely dehumanized,” he said. “I believe that the level to which we dehumanize other human beings is a mirror reflection of how internally disconnected and dehumanized that we are.”

That began the transformation. He had a son months later and was soon a single father being assisted by his mother who, he said, “never gave up on me.”

“It’s safe to love a child,” he said. “They see the magnificence in us when we can’t see it ourselves when we look in the mirror…. The more I can connect to my humanity, the more I can connect to the rest of humanity. I couldn’t connect to the rest of humanity because I couldn’t connect to myself.”

Though he was heavily involved in antisemitism, it wasn’t about Jews, he said.

“I was projecting my crap and I had a vehicle to project it onto – the Jewish people – and that’s what I did.”

The compassion Life After Hate promotes must be accompanied by healthy boundaries and consequences, he said.

“It doesn’t mean we let people off the hook. It doesn’t mean we don’t hold people accountable,” he said. “We do hold them accountable. It’s like tough love. But we need to see the humanity, even in someone whose heart is filled with hate. I don’t think we can afford to dehumanize anybody regardless of how inhuman their behaviour. I believe that nobody is irredeemable. It’s tough work.”

Brad Galloway, who is also a member of Life After Hate, joined McAleer at the event. Also a former white supremacist, Galloway is now completing a degree in the school of criminology and criminal justice at the University of the Fraser Valley. He researches extremism and participates in interventions with members of hate groups to help them leave the movements.

Galloway too came from a middle- to upper-class home. After a fairly typical adolescence and a period of struggling to find his identity, he ran into a childhood friend who was involved in the white power movement.

“I was looking for an identity,” said Galloway. “I was looking for something to belong to, something that I can call my own. He gave me the chance. We’ll give you brotherhood, we’ll back you up, we’ll be there for you … some sort of pseudo-support network which never, never came to fruition. They never provided any of those things for me.”

photo - Brad Galloway — Brad Galloway *(photo by Pat Johnson)*

Like McAleer, it was fatherhood that made Galloway realize his extremism was putting his family at risk.

He also reflects on compassion he received from police and others during his time in the far-right.

“Why do these people care about me?” he wondered, adding that he began to recognize that individuals who were kindest to him were often members of the very cultural groups he demonized. After a gang brawl where Galloway was nearly killed, he saw compassion in action.

“I ended up in a hospital and I’m lying on the table and a doctor walks in and he’s an Orthodox Jew. I’m lying there with a swastika shirt on, blood all over me, thinking this guy should not help me. I do not deserve to be helped at all right now…. I felt like I was a terrible person and I didn’t feel I deserved this person’s time,” said Galloway. “He did not mention anything about me. He just did his job as a doctor and provided me exactly what I needed. That moment made me start to think about all these different times when minority communities had been good to me.”

Since the racist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, Life After Hate has been inundated with requests for help. About 300 new cases have opened, about half of which are people trying to leave the movement, the other half family seeking help to extricate their loved ones.

Cpl. Anthony Statham, one of two members of the RCMP’s B.C. Hate Crimes Unit also spoke, outlining the legal strategies employed to fight extremism.

McAleer’s book, The Cure for Hate: A Former White Supremacist’s Journey from Violent Extremism to Radical Compassion has just been released by Arsenal Pulp Press.

Ever consider a ghostwriter?

Judi Majewski can help you express what you’d like to say in writing. (photo by Pat Johnson)

Want to write your thoughts down but you’re not so good with words? Need to write a difficult letter? Want to record some memories? If you need a ghostwriter to help you express what you need to say – no matter what it is – a volunteer is ready and willing.

Judi Majewski has been offering the free service at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library since the summer. She hopes readers of the Independent might know someone who can use her help.

“I thought, I know people struggle with this, so I would love to help people,” said the former public school teacher. Writing comes easy for her, she said, something she knows is not the case for everyone.

People for whom English is not a first language might benefit from her help, Majewski said, but she’s excited to help anyone.

“I think anybody, really, who wants to tell a story, who wants to record a memory, record their family history, write a eulogy. And anybody who struggles with putting things down on paper – I think there are a lot of people like that,” she said.

Publishing has never been a desire for her, she said, she just enjoys writing as a way of communicating feelings and thoughts.

“I have written the occasional difficult letter,” she said. “Sometimes your emotions are so involved and sometimes I think people can use help.”

She knows her challenge is to capture the voice of the person for whom she is writing.

“I want it to be in their voice. I think that’s going to be the interesting challenge for me, to see if I can do that, to see if it speaks for them,” she said. “That’s very important.”

Her husband told her she could make a business out of it, but she doesn’t want to go into business. She’s just happy to help, she said.

He offered some other advice, too.

“My husband says I express myself much better in the written word,” she said laughing. “Sometimes we think maybe we should just write to each other.”

To contact Majewski, visit her at the Waldman Library, in the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, until Dec. 11, where she will be every other Wednesday, at 1:30 p.m., or email her directly at [email protected].

Focus on online hate

Kasari Govender, British Columbia’s human rights commissioner. (photo from Wosk Centre)

Hate in British Columbia, in Canada and globally is on the rise. In 2017, there were 255 police-reported hate crimes in British Columbia, an increase of 55% from just two years earlier. In 2018, Metro Vancouver had the highest rate of hate crimes reported to police in any of Canada’s three largest metropolitan areas, most based on the victim’s ethnicity or religion, with a smaller but significant number based on sexual orientation.

These alarming statistics, and others, provided a framework and urgency for an event Sept. 12 at Simon Fraser University’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue in downtown Vancouver. The event, titled From Hate to Hope in a Digital Age, is envisioned as the inaugural annual Simces and Rabkin Family Dialogue on Human Rights.

Contextualizing the discussion, Shauna Sylvester, executive director of the Wosk Centre for Dialogue, cited the results of a report undertaken by her organization. These indicate that one in three Canadians believes Canadian-born citizens should have greater say in government than those born outside the country. One-quarter of Canadians say we have too many protections for minorities and one in four also believes we have too many protections for religious freedom.

Keynote speaker at the forum was Kasari Govender, in just her second week on the job as British Columbia’s human rights commissioner. She is the first to hold this role in the province since that office was closed in 2002.

“In my view, there is a strong connection between hateful speech and hateful violence, both on an individual and a systemic level,” she said, citing racist manifestoes sometimes posted online by perpetrators in advance of a mass killing. She said it is necessary to trace the path from speech to violence.

A common theme of recent mass murderers is anti-immigration sentiment, sometimes emphasizing the “purity of the nation, whether that nation is Canada, New Zealand, the U.S. or another,” she said, adding that many of the attacks around the world that have been linked to white nationalism correspond to discourse in mainstream political debates over immigration and public policy.

The worst antisemitic mass murder in United States history, the attack on Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, happened while U.S. President Donald Trump and others were promoting fears of the so-called “migrant caravan” coming from Central America. Part of that conversation, Govender said, “was somehow blaming the Jews for this migrant caravan, drawing a connection in the public discourse, and then there was the shooting.”

Boris Johnson, now prime minister of the United Kingdom, compared women who wear burqas to bank robbers, which led, Govender said, to an increase in acts of hate against Muslim women in the United Kingdom.

Online hate is a particular product of technologies that have emerged in recent decades, she said. “The anonymity, reach and immediacy afforded by the internet escalates the problem beyond what we’ve seen before,” she said. “The internet is a very effective tool for fomenting hate from belief to action, from hateful words to violent actions.”

While forcing social media platforms to police hate speech might be criticized as an infringement of free expression, she said, the opposite is true. Regulating platforms to shut down violent rhetoric actually improves access to freedom of expression for many, as people of colour, women and others are being silenced online by racism and misogyny, she said.

Participants at the Wosk Centre offered a wide range of perspectives.

Evan Balgord, executive director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, outlined the approach his agency takes in confronting online hatred.

“Legal [action] would be our last recourse against a hate group or a hate propagandist,” he noted, saying that their first response is to “try to hold somebody socially accountable.” That means, if the person is anonymous, exposing them. If the person is not anonymous, this might mean bringing their posts to the attention of their employers, family and friends.

“Those might provide checks on their behaviour,” he said, adding, “We’re not really trying to reform people here, we’re just trying to stop the spread of hate propaganda.”

For those who do not respond to social accountability, Balgord said, Canada’s laws are insufficient. Application of the Criminal Code’s section that deals with the wilful promotion of hate and distribution of hate propaganda is unwieldy.

“We did use to have a better recourse,” he said. “It was Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. It would allow a private individual to essentially file a complaint, which would be vetted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission and, if found credible, would go to the tribunal. They could order a cease-and-desist order against that individual and up to a $5,000 fine.” If, at that point, the individual failed to comply, they would be in contravention of a court order and could face jail.

“We really want to see something like Section 13 come back,” he said.

Several speakers agreed that social media platforms need to do more policing of hate speech. Some countries have laws that force social media companies to address hate material on their platforms within certain timeframes or face serious fines.

Social media platforms, Balgord said, may already be in contravention of Canada’s existing laws against discrimination in the provision of a commercial service, because women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people and other members of targeted groups are exposed to abuse, harassment and death threats that could drive them off the platform.

Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan-Kaplan, director of inter-religious studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, noted that government budgets are limited but that education can take place everywhere – and that everyone is an educator. Early childhood is crucial, she said.

“What children do together, the songs they sing, the books they read, all of that becomes the building blocks of the way they think,” she said. “All of us who interact with children have an opportunity to begin to teach values of respecting difference, helping others, nonviolence.… One week of summer camp with friends on a theme of diversity, peace, public service – these are experiences that stay with teens and we really, really bring them into young adulthood in a different way.”

A speaker from the audience, a counselor and educator, noted that inequality, including economic inequality and poverty, makes people susceptible to fear and that can become a foundation for hate.

Another speaker contended that there is, in effect, no such thing as race.

“I think it’s very problematic to use the term race as if it’s a reality,” he said. “There is such a thing as racism but not really race. If you look at the majority of anthropologists, geneticists and so on, they say that we have much, much more in common with each other [than differences].… Even using terms like black and white to refer to people reinforces racism. We never call people yellow anymore, because that’s racist. We need to come up with a new language that doesn’t emphasize unreal differences and that are respectful to everybody.”

Lorene Oikawa, president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians, contended that sharing one another’s stories is an effective means to education.

“People really don’t know the stories,” she said. “For sure, there are some people who do, but they don’t know the [extent of the] harm that was done and the intergenerational trauma.”

She applied lessons of the past to current events. “In 2019, Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians are horrified by some of the hateful rhetoric we’re hearing [that] could be lifted from 1942,” she said. “If people knew their history, more people would be going, ‘Wait a minute. What we did back in 1942 was wrong. Why are we saying the same things about people from [other] countries, putting people in camps, separating families, separating children from their families?’ All that stuff happened to Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians and it’s being repeated today.”

She added: “We feel it’s our duty that what happened to our community must never happen to another community again.”

Clint Curle, senior advisor to the president of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, agreed that education is pivotal.

“Is there a lesson, an experience, we can give children especially that will make them resistant to hate speech and resistant to hateful violence?” asked Curle. He compared hatred to a communicable disease.

“If this was polio, what would we do? If this was polio, we would do what we did, which is vaccinate. The way vaccinations work is you get children and you give them just enough of something close to the disease [so] that they develop an internal resistance to it, so, when they encounter the disease, there is something within them that says, no. So, when they encounter hate, they’ll know.”

With more than 1.5 million visitors to the museum since it opened five years ago, Curle said what resonates, especially with young people, is exactly what Oikawa suggested.

“The thing that seems to work best is storytelling across social boundaries,” he said.

Zena Simces, a health and social service policy consultant and a former Pacific region chair of the now-defunct Canadian Jewish Congress, conceived of the annual event with her husband, Dr. Simon Rabkin.

“We felt that we wanted to enhance an understanding of human rights in our community and to create an opportunity for dialogue on human rights issues,” Simces said. “Our aim is to select current and relevant themes each year and to invite experts and community leaders and community members to advance and generate positive action.”

Rabkin, a cardiologist, professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia and president of the medical staff at Vancouver General Hospital, added: “The dialogue this evening … is seeking to enhance our understanding and knowledge of how this increase in hate and its consequences can be addressed from legal, social media and community perspectives.”

Dealing with adversity

Houston Rabbi Brian Strauss lost both his family home and his synagogue to Hurricane Harvey, but the story he brought to FEDtalks Sept. 9 was an uplifting one. (photo from JFGV)

A time-lapse video showed the unrelenting advance of Hurricane Harvey. The security camera at Houston’s Jewish community centre captured the natural disaster’s impact on the building’s interior from the moment the first drops of water came through the front door until the deluge reached the ceiling. Furniture became unmoored and began to swirl around the building’s lobby.

The Category 4 hurricane made landfall in August 2017, slamming Texas and Louisiana with catastrophic flooding and dozens of fatalities. Material damages were estimated at $125 billion US, mostly in Houston and southeast Texas.

The Jewish community of Texas had to rebuild. Synagogues, the JCC, the Jewish seniors home and one in every 13 Jewish family homes were ruined.

Rabbi Brian Strauss, who spoke in Vancouver Sept. 9, lost both his family home and his synagogue. The issue was not merely flooding. Any flooding damages property, but the area’s topography meant that Houston was submerged in toxic bayou water, rendering everything it touched toxic. Added to this, the humidity of Houston caused mold to grow immediately. Houston received 52 inches of rain in three days – equivalent to its average annual rainfall. (By contrast, he noted, Vancouver gets 46 inches of rain annually.)

But the story Strauss brought to the Vancouver Playhouse – he was one of four speakers at FEDtalks, the opening event of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver’s annual campaign – was an uplifting one.

Volunteers from around the world descended on Houston. The federal government provided resources to rebuild synagogues, homes and communal facilities. Especially notable: Israel donated $1 million to a Diaspora community struggling with crisis. Strauss juxtaposed the phenomenon of Jewish giving, which for decades flowed from the Diaspora to Israel, with the reality that Israel is now in a position to help a community in crisis abroad.

Also speaking at the campaign launch event was Risa Alyson Cooper, executive director of Shoresh. She shared her journey into Jewish spiritual and ethical issues around food. Shoresh is an Ontario-based organization that “inspires and empowers our community to take care of the earth by connecting people, land and Jewish tradition.”

“Eating is an ethical act,” Cooper said. By engaging community members “from seed to harvest,” the organization reduces the stigma of receiving “donated” foods.

“It’s not a handout,” she said. People are involved in creating their own food sustainability.

Cooper’s journey of exploration began during a trip in Nelson, B.C., a story she shared in an article the Independent ran in advance of the event. (See jewishindependent.ca/b-c-inspires-activists-work.)

Also at FEDtalks, Isaac “Bougie” Herzog – who chose to sit out not one but two Israeli elections this year – spoke about his role as head of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Herzog is Israel’s former leader of the opposition and former head of the Labour party. In contextualizing his role as chairperson of the world’s largest Jewish organization, an agency that has been central in creating and building the Jewish state, he spoke of continuing a family legacy.

His grandfather, Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, who was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, went on a rescue mission in 1946 to find hidden Jewish children in churches and monasteries throughout Europe, bringing thousands of them to Palestine. Herzog’s father, Chaim, who went on to become president of Israel, served with the U.K. army, landed in Normandy, fought in the Battle of the Rhine and was among the first to enter the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Abba Eban, the legendary Israeli diplomat and statesman, was an uncle.

“I’m fulfilling the orders of my forbearers,” said Herzog, who was introduced by Karen James, immediate past board chair of the Jewish Federation and a member of the board of the Jewish Agency. The Independent also interviewed Herzog in advance of his visit. (Read the story at jewishindependent.ca/building-jewish-future.)

The most emotional presentation of the night came last. Dr. Gillian Presner recounted how she was invited to join the Federation movement’s National Young Leadership Cabinet. When she was told the commitment was five years, she replied: “That’s the rest of my life.”

Presner was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2016, while pregnant with her third daughter. Nine days after the baby was born, she suffered a stroke.

Despite the challenges of raising a very young family while enduring terminal brain cancer, she accepted the invitation to join the cabinet because, she said, “I refuse to die before I’m dead.”

She added: “I am full of hope, but I am also a realist.”

She understands that she needs to leave a legacy of vibrant memories to her daughters – the family took a trip to Israel together, certain it would be her only chance – but she also knows that her daughters will “have to learn about me by hearing about what Mommy did.”

By continuing to devote herself to philanthropic causes, she is “showing my daughters what I truly value.”

Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation, closed the evening, noting “our most precious commodity we have here is our time.”

Alex Cristall, chair of the board of Federation, welcomed the audience, acknowledging in particular 150 people in their 20s and 30s whose presence was made possible through a contribution by Jonathon and Karly Leipsic. Jonathon Leipsic is the annual campaign chair for the second consecutive year.

“It is a pleasure to have you,” Cristall said. “We need you.”

Jonathon Leipsic spoke of Theodor Herzl’s dream of Jewish self-determination and noted: “Our generation has never known a generation without emancipated Jewish freedom.”

He urged the audience to go to YouTube and find Chaim Herzog’s speech to the United Nations in 1975 against the motion that equated Zionism with racism.

“It will send shivers down your spine,” he said.

Members of Parliament Joyce Murray, Don Davies, Jody Wilson-Raybould, Randeep Sarai and Hedy Fry were in attendance, the latter of whom spoke from the podium and brought greetings from the prime minister. Also present were Selena Robinson, British Columbia’s minister of municipal affairs and housing; George Heyman, minister of environment and climate change strategy; George Chow, minister of state for trade; and Anne Kang, member of the Legislative Assembly. Vancouver city councilors Melissa De Genova, Colleen Hardwick, Sarah Kirby-Yung and Pete Fry attended, as did the consuls general of France, Germany and the United States, and Vancouver Police Chief Adam Palmer.

O Canada and Hatikvah were sung by the King David High School Choir.

To donate to the campaign and watch videos of all the FEDtalks speakers, visit jewishvancouver.com.

Eisen’s story of survival

As public opinion surveys continue to tell us that vast numbers of people know little or nothing about the Holocaust, it was encouraging that Max Eisen’s memoir, By Chance Alone, became CBC Radio’s Canada Reads 2019 choice, bringing this wrenching narrative to many more eyes and ears.

Born in Czechoslovakia in 1929, Eisen enjoyed a childhood filled with shenanigans and idyllic summer excursions to his maternal family’s farm – until the Nazi invasion of his country, in 1938.

“At 9, I didn’t fully understand what was taking place, but I noticed the rising tensions in my hometown,” he writes.

Eisen’s father’s friends assembled at their home to listen to a major address by the Führer on a crystal radio. “All of us understood basic German,” he writes. Hitler’s words, “Wir werden die Juden ausradieren” – “We are going to eradicate all the Jews of Europe” – clarified for the young Eisen the import of the moment.

While traumas befell the family from then on, it was in the night after the first seder in 1944 that the worst of the family’s catastrophe began to unfold.

At 2 a.m., after the family had settled into bed after what Eisen calls their “last supper,” a neighbour arrived at their property urgently insisting that the family hide in the forest because he had overheard gendarmes saying that they would gather all the Jews in the vicinity the next day. Because it was Passover and the Sabbath, Eisen’s grandfather declared that the family would not travel. At 6 a.m., gendarmes forced their way into the home, gave the family five minutes to pack a bundle and be ready to depart their home.

The complicity of bystanders before, during and after the Holocaust permeates the book.

“On both sides of the road, the townspeople jeered and cursed at us as we passed. Many were looking out the windows of the Jewish homes they now occupied.… Many townsfolk who bought goods on credit from Jews like my grandfather were happy they wouldn’t have to pay the money back. Our deportation was an economic windfall for them.”

In the chaos of arrival at Auschwitz, Eisen had no idea of the seriousness of the separation of himself, his father and uncle from the rest of their family. The three would be the only ones to survive the first selection.

The everyday “indignities and deprivations” they had experienced before quickly turned to horrors. The forced labour he endured, long shifts of excruciatingly exhausting work on starvation rations, was fatal to those less strong.

His father and uncle were moved to another barracks and, after selection one day, Eisen could not find them.

“I ran to a fenced off holding area where the SS kept the selected prisoners until they were ready to transport them to Birkenau to be gassed.… My father reached out across the wire and blessed me with a classic Jewish prayer…. The same prayer my father once uttered to bless his children every Friday evening before the Sabbath meal. Then he said, ‘If you survive, you must tell the world what happened here. Now go.’”

At one point, when Eisen let down his guard and relaxed for a moment, an SS guard delivered a blow with the butt of his gun on the back of Eisen’s head. The nearly fatal attack put Eisen in the camp’s infirmary, which proved one of the chances that led to the book’s title. A surgeon, a Polish political prisoner, assigned Eisen the job of cleaning and running the operating theatre. Although the responsibilities he was forced to undertake and the things he witnessed were appalling, the comparative comfort of the job may have saved his life.

As the Nazi regime was on its last legs, “the SS ceased distributing rations and the water system was shut down,” Eisen writes. “I woke up to the smell of cooking meat.… Several inmates sat around a small stove and watched as a pot boiled. I could not imagine how they had acquired meat, but when I crawled to the latrine where the cadavers were stacked, I noticed that some of the bodies were missing pieces from their buttocks.”

On May 6, 1945, the camp was liberated, but the term lacks much meaning in the context. Everything and everyone Eisen knew was destroyed. When the Americans provided food, a stampede of starving people led to deaths by trampling. Those who got food suffered ruptured stomachs and many died on the spot.

After overcoming a nearly fatal bout of pleurisy, Eisen faced yet more incarceration. After the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia, his plan to find freedom abroad was dashed. Because he came from the eastern, Hungarian-speaking part of the country, he tried to obtain phony Hungarian ID and join a mass of Hungarian refugees passing through to the West. Discovered, he was imprisoned for a year.

When finally released, Eisen was given 24 hours to get out of his native country. Eventually, he made his way to Canada where, since the 1980s, he has educated school kids and others about the Holocaust.

“It is in this way,” he writes, “that I have fulfilled my final promise to my father: telling the story of our collective suffering so it will never be forgotten.”