VHEC opens its new exhibit

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

“Canada has more than compensated me for her initial rejection and her hostile indifference to my overtures,” Rabbi Erwin Schild told a near-capacity audience at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre on Monday, June 11. “The opportunities she eventually offered me have engendered in me a true patriot’s love. I sing our national anthem always with deep feeling and often with tears welling up in my eyes. To keep Canada glorious, free and united, I gladly continue to stand on guard.”

Schild was one of the “camp boys” who spoke at the launch of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre’s new exhibit “Enemy Aliens”: The Internment of Jewish Refugees in Canada, 1940-1943. But first, VHEC executive director Frieda Miller welcomed the audience to the opening of the exhibit, about “a little-known chapter of our national history, Canada’s wartime internment of over 2,300 Jewish refugees of Nazism.”

Miller introduced the four former internees who were able to attend the launch: Gunther Erlich from Vancouver, Dr. Walter Kohn from Santa Barbara, Ray Pariser from Boston and Schild, who is from Toronto. She noted that the VHEC staff became greatly attached to the men who were interviewed for the exhibit, and that the evening was dedicated to the memory of three interviewees who had since passed away: Dr. Gideon Rosenbluth, Sigmund (Sigi) Muenz and Dr. Ernest Poser, all from the Vancouver area.

Miller thanked many people, highlighting three from internee families: Wendy Oberlander, “the daughter of the late Peter Oberlander, who had the vision and passion to imagine such a project. She came to us with ideas, boxes of research material from her film on the subject, Nothing to be Written Here, and connections to many of the other internee families. This wonderful network revealed people like Vera Rosenbluth, daughter of the late Gideon Rosenbluth, who dedicated herself to her role as interviewer for our video testimony project. And, lastly, Frank Koller, son of the late Philipp Koller, who unearthed invaluable footage from the deepest recesses of the CBC archives for us, and has been a tireless media promoter on our behalf.”

The exhibit has been created in both French and English, and is intended to cross the country, explained Miller. There is also a companion teaching website, developed by the VHEC with 7th Floor Media, which “will be hosted on Virtual Museum of Canada and serve as an important educational legacy of the project,” she continued.

Before thanking the financial contributors to the project, Miller thanked several of the people who worked on it, including exhibit curator Nina Krieger and exhibit writer Dr. Paula Draper, who both spoke at the launch.

Draper is a Holocaust historian specializing in memory history, explained Miller in her introduction: “In 1977, she began researching the story of Canada and the interned refugees, completing her PhD thesis, entitled The Accidental Immigrants, in 1983.” Among other endeavors, Draper has been active in Holocaust education, was involved in the Royal Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, as well as the second trial of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, and has published widely on the topic of Canada and the Holocaust, said Miller.

When Draper took to the podium, she described the varied demographics of the men who were interned. These men, she said, “posed an enigma to government, the military and the Jewish community. The refugees were stuck behind barbed wire in a land that was fighting their mortal enemy and yet seemed blinded to the reality of their plight by a bizarre combination of bureaucracy and antisemitism. They languished in the camps, attempting to use their time wisely, while struggling to regain their freedom. Meanwhile, their advocates wrestled with an indifferent government for better conditions and release into Canada as immigrants.

“In 1976, I was a graduate student looking for a Canadian story of the Holocaust, when I found myself in the musty basement of the Canadian Jewish Congress building in Toronto among boxes of files no one had looked at for 30 years. And so began a journey into the story of Canada, the Holocaust and the diverse group of men who realized in 1945 that they were among the very few who had survived,” she continued.

Draper had known one of the internees, so she started with that interview, then went back and forth between interviews with other former internees and boxes of case files, first those she found in Toronto, then files from Montreal and Ottawa, to write her thesis.

“While Britain did attempt to separate possible spies from the mass of, quote, ‘enemy aliens,’ the decision to deport large numbers to the dominions was made in order to conserve military forces to repel the expected German invasion,” she explained. “Only the sinking of one of the ships on its way to Canada and the publicity surrounding the loss of refugee lives stopped further mass deportation and, in the end, the British authorities pressured Canada to release the men and facilitated the return of those who decided not to wait for an improbable Canadian change of heart.

“The organized Jewish community and other refugee advocates worked tirelessly to ameliorate conditions in the camps and to get the men out, but the plight of the refugees, officially labeled as ‘dangerous spies,’ presented them with a public relations nightmare, so they felt they had to work quietly behind the scenes.”

Draper said, “Canada’s immigration policies remained unbending, until the majority of refugees had returned to Britain and negative publicity had pressured the release of the remainder: [almost] 960 men. They remained in Canada, libel to deportation till the government realized that granting them citizenship could ward off the inevitable pressure to admit large numbers of Holocaust survivors once the war ended.”

Draper shared her thoughts on how the topic was approached for the exhibit, 30 years after her thesis interviews. She noted that some of the anger had dissipated, but also that former internees had become more likely to see themselves as Holocaust survivors, “and, notably, their children see themselves as second generation. Most grew up without extended family, as did other children of survivors, and perhaps that fact more than any other altered their fathers’ self-perceptions.

“And so, how to present this story to a new generation, one far removed from the Canada of the 1940s, one that is accustomed to multiculturalism and government refugee policies and laws that should protect us from discrimination? Revisiting this story and reformulating it for an exhibit has been a challenge for, unlike most Holocaust stories, here, the bad guys are perceived as Britain and Canada. And so, in writing the exhibit, we first had to paint the backdrop of Nazism and the slow isolation that colored the early lives of the internees. Interspersing personal stories with political and social history, we move the internees to Britain, a country itself increasingly isolated as Nazi Germany pushed towards its borders. We then examined Canada’s immigration policies during the Depression and the anti-Jewish sentiment that underlay its closed doors. This gives us a context for the personal stories of the internees as we follow them from Europe to Britain to camps in Canada and eventual release.”

In her remarks, Krieger, who is also the VHEC education director, explained the exhibit’s design in more detail, noting, “The main space or heart of the exhibit is devoted to the responses of the internees to their incarceration, varied responses reflected in the establishment of camp schools, the creation of artworks, the commitment to religious observance and the engagement in political debates.

“We have a number of artifacts that speak to each of these themes and have taken great care to display the materials entrusted to us.”

The VHEC conducted interviews, ranging from three to 10 hours in length, with 15 internees, and these are now part of the VHEC’s collection of testimonies, said Krieger. Excerpts of these interviews are grouped into themes, such as education. “Viewers follow and get to know a number of individuals as they move through the exhibit,” she explained.

Noting the centrality of education to the VHEC’s mandate, Krieger said the VHEC “will be developing a docent-led school program that will see student groups tour the exhibit in the fall and throughout the academic year.” She also elucidated on the teaching website, which will “invite visitors to become active contributors to this story. We will solicit submissions of writings and materials related to personal experiences of internment, turning the site into a repository for historical data that might otherwise be lost.

“We were, of course, only able to profile a small fraction of those interned in our physical exhibit and the virtual exhibit will allow us to expand the scope of the project,” she continued. “But, in one way or another, we do introduce 25 individuals in the exhibit downstairs, either through their material or their testimony. On a touch screen towards the end of the exhibit, we have compiled the biographical sketches of these individuals. Here, visitors can learn more about the internees’ prewar, wartime and postwar lives. On this touch screen, we have also added a number of video clips that did not quite ‘fit’ elsewhere in the thematic assemblies – lovingly told stories and broader insights that were simply too good not to include.

“At the very end of the exhibit,” said Krieger, “we have created a video ‘postscript,’ in which the internees offer reflections of some of the important themes and questions that emerge from a consideration of this chapter of Canadian history. Interviewees speak to the effects of internment on their feelings of identity, and on the relationship between internment and the Holocaust.”

The complexity of these issues was highlighted in Schild’s speech, as well as that of Kohn, who also addressed the audience.

Schild praised the VHEC and the supporters who have made it “into the vibrant institution that it has become. I must say that it is a credit to the Vancouver Jewish community – larger Jewish centres, like Montreal or Toronto, didn’t pick up the challenge that you did here in this community and, for this, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

“There are events that are too powerful, that are too significant, to just be consigned to historical preservation,” he continued. “There are events that must always remain contemporary and not merely historical. In the Jewish tradition, we are supposed to actualize and to recreate the experience of the Exodus from Egypt ... when we say the Sh’ma, we recite, ‘asher anochi m’tzavchah hayom,’ the laws, the words, the values ‘that I [God] present to you today,’ not 2,000 or 3,000 or 4,000 years ago.... And this is certainly the case in the subject of the Holocaust ... an event that is part of the present-day experience of the Jew. It isn’t something in the past, it is here and now in our minds and, certainly, the centre here fulfils this function marvelously.

“The Holocaust happened far away from here. Here, in Canada, however, we have what I call a footnote to the Holocaust.... The experience of the internment of Jewish refugees in Canada is dwarfed by the genocide of the Holocaust and yet it could only have happened in a world that permitted the Holocaust to happen.”

Schild went on to recount how he, who was born in Mülheim, Germany, in 1920, came to be in Canada, arriving on July 15, 1940.

“Behind me was a youth spent, for many years, in Nazi Germany. Hitler came to power about six weeks before my bar mitzvah. Jews, young or old, were stripped of their civic rights, their human rights, and denied the opportunity of growing up normally in freedom.... The Nazis deprived me of what I felt was my cultural heritage. I loved German literature and German philosophy and German art, but I found out that it wasn’t mine.”

Having survived Kristallnacht, Schild was thrown into Dachau concentration camp, but released, he said, through the efforts of his family, at the end of 1938.

“After painful waiting,” he said, “I finally escaped to Britain, where I studied at the yeshivah and found myself, only one year later, to be behind barbed wires again, guarded by armed men.... I was deported to Canada with many others, not voluntarily.”

There were other countries to which Schild and his fellow inmates could have been sent but “Providence” brought him here, “not to be released, but where we were treated definitely as captive enemy aliens.

“I want to make it clear, for me and the people who were in the same stream, because there were several streams, depending on which prison ship took us to Canada ... and we got into different camps accordingly. I did not suffer any physical suffering in Canadian internment. I know that, in some other camps, this was not always the case but, I must say that definitely there was no comparison between Dachau and Fort Lennox, where I was interned for a certain stretch of time,” said Schild.

“Still, we suffered anguish,” added Schild later. “But this anguish was not physical, but mental and emotional and it stretched for almost two years – a long time for a young man of 20 years of age. Deprivation of freedom is painful.”

Schild spoke of the psychological torment, the fear and the uncertainty of how long the internment would last and of what would happen afterwards. He also spoke of the anger the internees felt towards Britain and Canada, and to the Jewish community, as the internees perceived that little was being done to obtain their release. “Now, in retrospect, we do know that Canadian Jews, Canadian Jewish Congress and other impromptu refugee agencies, did make great efforts, which finally were successful, but, in the camp, we had little indication of that,” explained Schild.

Since that time, much has changed for the better, Schild continued, in part because of the work of the former internees and their supporters. “And that is why I think it is a story with a happy ending,” he said. “And that is why I think it is only a footnote – but a wonderful, great footnote – to the Holocaust because, once released, Canada gave us the opportunity to make a tremendous contribution to our nation.”

Kohn expressed a similar sentiment. “For me,” he said, “the main feeling of settling in Canada was one of incredible gratitude and joy. I wanted very much ... to make my life in Canada. It so happened that I couldn’t find a job, so I moved to the United States.”

Kohn, a Nobel laureate, was born in Vienna in 1923, leaving Austria in 1939 on a children’s transport. He joined his sister in England, where he attended a public school before he was arrested as an enemy alien. He was interned in Britain for two months before being sent to Canada, where he was held in camps in Quebec and New Brunswick.

Kohn shared photos of some of the key people in his life during this period. “We who are telling you about our personal experiences do this, of course, from different perspectives,” he said, “and my perspective is going to be to convey to you something of the personality of those Canadians who helped young immigrants that had spent something like one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half years in internment to become Canadians, not just in the sense of a formal stamp, but to feel at home in Canada.”

Kohn began his presentation with an image of Dr. Emil Nohel, a teacher from the Chajes Gymnasium in Vienna, whose field was physics and who greatly influenced him. The next photos were of Hertha and Dr. Bruno Mendel of Toronto and some of their family, who sponsored (and took care of) five refugee boys, allowing the young men to remain in Canada after having been released from internment. One of these men obtained a PhD in physics and became a professor, another became a Canadian radio personality and author, another became an engineer and the last one had a career as a psychiatrist.

“I don’t if this group was typical,” said Kohn. “Nevertheless, it does show that the kind of unbelievable charity that the Mendel family [and others] displayed can really yield wonderful fruit.”

Kohn also singled out for thanks Dr. William Heckscher, an art historian, who was the education director for all of the camps in which Kohn was interned. Kohn said Heckscher organized a “wonderful camp school” and made an “official arrangement with McGill University that camp students were allowed to take the junior matriculation examination of McGill University ... and then you were a graduate at that level.... It was enormously important and, because this was a Canadian general institution, it brought us a big step further along into the state of integration in Canada.”

The final photo was one of Kohn, in 1945, dressed in his Queen’s Own Rifles uniform.

The opening event concluded with the honoring of all the internees, with the VHEC paying special tribute to the four in attendance. Miller gave brief bios of the men who hadn’t addressed the audience.

Erlich was born in Berlin in 1918 and imprisoned in Buchenwald after Kristallnacht, explained Miller. In March 1939, he was released and he, his brother and his uncle made it to England. “In 1940, he was arrested as an ‘enemy alien’ and was deported to Canada, where he was interned in camps in Ontario and Quebec. After his release from internment, Mr. Erlich served in the Canadian reserve army and designed fighter aircraft.” He went on to establish a heating and air-systems company in Montreal, moving to Vancouver in 1989.

Pariser was born in 1918 in Berlin. “After attending school in Switzerland, he was admitted to the University of Cambridge in 1936. Despite his status as a ‘refugee from Nazi oppression,’ Mr. Pariser was arrested by the British police as an ‘enemy alien’ and shipped to Canada, where he was interned in camps in Quebec. After his release, he returned to Britain, where he received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Cambridge. During the war, he translated documents for the British government and worked as a private assistant to Prof. Chaim Weizmann. After the war, he worked at MIT in the department of food, science and nutrition and helped create the Marine Polymer Technologies company.”

The “Enemy Aliens” exhibit is on display at the VHEC until June 2013.

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