Is There No Escape?

Canada is a proud country, a country that can and does boast of its egalitarian progressiveness; its democratic, liberal nature, the freedoms and assurances of equality between genders, religions, ideologies guarantees quality of life and liberty to all.  This is a wealthy country, a technologically advanced one, generous in aiding other, less fortunate countries to help bring their standards forward toward social balance and modernity.

We're proud of our multiculturalism ideal, though a pluralistic society can be more successful if it has expectations of immigrants regarding their equal obligations to their new country, to match the quality of the privileges they receive upon reaching our shores.  With the ongoing introduction of a vast multitude of varying cultures expressing a wide range of geographies, heritage, religions, episodes of agitation occur when cultures clash.

Yet Canada has managed to balance all the challenges it is exposed to, with a fair amount of success, to present a clear conscience to the world and the determination to continue offering its humanitarian services where and when possible.  There is untold strife on this globe, and where it has been required that Canada take part in protecting the quality of life for those afflicted, we have been there.

We are far in chronological order from another time, not so distant, when Canada reflected the xenophobic disdain of all Western countries that had made their mark within the less privileged, less advanced areas of the world through the self-availing patronage of colonialism.  But long after the oppression and possession of other countries passed, this country was anything but welcoming to the masses of suffering humanity.

If refugees or would-be migrants came from Western Europe, and they were Caucasian they were welcome, and would fit right in with prevailing Canadian social values.  Aboriginal Canadians were long familiar with the anguish of neglect and oppression, Japanese Canadians were interned, their properties confiscated, Chinese Canadians were subject to a racist-inspired head tax and European Jews desperate to escape annihilation were forbidden entry.

Those Canadian Jews who were long settled in the country represented a minority grouping recognized as racially inferior to be kept out of prestige establishments, not permitted to mingle with the advantaged Europeans, nor study at universities, nor seek treatment or practise at public hospitals.  Jews, Negroes and dogs not permitted entry to certain restricted establishments.  Of relatively recent vintage.

During the Second World War there were rare individuals in Europe who were horrified at the realization that Nazi Germany had embarked on a precise and determined program of mass extermination of Jews.  Discrete and discreet efforts were made in a modest, personal way by some members of European society to shelter Jews.  They are listed in the Righteous Among the Nations Yad Vashem recognition.

Some individuals stand out on their own, like the German industrialist Oscar Schindler, like the Japanese Consul Chiune Sugihara who at risk to himself issued visas and saved at least ten thousand Jews from extermination.  And then there is the incomparable Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish businessman turned diplomat assigned by his country to Hungary, who saved countless Jewish lives.

What is so telling here is that although democratic nations were at war against a fascist totalitarianism that threatened the stability of the entire world, it was not governments nor organized religions, but ultra decent, conscience-stricken individuals who took it upon themselves to risk their lives and the lives of those they loved to help spare the lives of helpless victims of Nazi racism.

Canada, in refusing to accept Jewish refugees, was no different than any other democratic - or undemocratic - country of the world.  No one had any room to spare to accommodate Jews attempting to flee a dreadful fate.  If any governments felt compassion for the plight of Jews, they far preferred other countries to step forward rather than inconvenience themselves with an unwanted population of Jews.

Jews represented - in the words of historian Irving Abella who documented Canada's history of non-accommodation to Jewish entry-and-rescue during the Second World War -  "pariahs, demeaned, despised and discriminated against".  A mere fifty years ago when the Jewish Louis Rasminsky was Governor of the Bank of Canada he was refused admittance to the exclusive Ottawa Rideau Club. 

Some things have changed since then.  Canada is an open and welcoming host, proud to have among its citizens people from all around the globe.  And everyone, regardless of ethnicity, heritage, religion is accorded equal welcome, and an equally assured place in Canadian society.  On the other hand, in some places, the more things change the more they resemble the past.

In Europe, which became a veritable charnel house for two-thirds of the Jewish existence on Earth, with six million Jews perishing in a concerted effort to rid the world of Jews, increasingly Europe is becoming a dangerous place for Jews to live.  Violent anti-Semitism has resurged.  Attacks against Jewish institutions and Jewish individuals have accelerated and have become common.

And much of it is related to immigration.  Unsurprisingly, it is also related to religion.  The Jewish State of Israel, a reality in the wake of the Second World War, is established in its biblical-era homeland, a place of settlement where Jewish presence has never been absent.  That a Jewish state exists in the midst of Islamic countries of the Middle East has never been fully accepted by its neighbours.

And the ongoing, seemingly intractable conflict between Jewish/Israeli and Muslim/Arabic values and resentments leading to relentless rage has resulted in a huge upsurge in anti-Semitism.  One which has migrated back to Europe with the influx of Arab and Muslim refugees from the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan, along with North Africa.

In tiny Denmark, for example where, during the Axis occupation of much of Europe, the Danish royal family led the entire population in wearing yellow stars and refusing to give up their Jewish population to the extermination camps, much has changed.  Jews in Denmark have been alerted to dangers in exhibiting themselves as Jews; they are not to appear in public wearing Jewish religious symbols.

No skullcaps, no star of David in public display, lest one draw attention and possibly violence to oneself.  Whether it is in Italy, Norway, France, Britain, Finland, Germany, or Sweden, discretion is the order of the day.  Required because of the increasing number of physical attacks - on children, on the elderly.  Exiting a synagogue, remove one's skullcap.

In Malmö, Sweden, the country which once gave the world saints like Raoul Wallenberg, members of the local synagogue decided not to keep their kippahs on, upon exiting their synagogue.  Increasingly, synagogues are deploying security guards.  In Canada there are alerts over the very same incidences of anti-Semitic violence.  In Israel violence against Jews is endemic.