Proudly Canadian, Shameful Background

"In the wider context of the Holocaust, here were all these people who needed a place to go, and Canada wouldn't let them in. And this handful of people who did get in became very proud Canadians and contributed through every sphere of our society."
Paula Draper, historian

"The Canadians expected prisoners of war rather than civilian internees, and [the British] certainly didn't tell the Canadians that most of us were Jewish."
"I would say it was a hugely important phase in my life. We were together with people who were extraordinarily erudite and good teachers, and one could spend time with them under conditions that were favourable to learning, especially once we could get books."
"Nobody could know what the Holocaust was going to do with our families. Many of us had parents in Germany and Austria. We could not know they were about to be murdered, but we had reason to worry, because we were cut off from them."
Eric Koch, 94, former Sherbrooke internee

"In spite of the fact that a certain percentage may be heartily Anti-Nazi, it cannot be forgotten that they are German born Jews. Jews still retain much of the same instincts they had 1940 years ago and these in particular are very apt to try and take advantage of privileges which if once given result in demands for more. The combination of this insidious instinct and the well known characteristics of the German habit of breaking every pledge ever made, is not particularly easy to handle except by maintaining strict discipline and rigid enforcement of Camp rules and regulations."
Major W.J.H. Ellwood, commandant, Sherbrooke camp

In 1940, while Nazi forces swept as a juggernaut of brutality across Europe, Winston Churchill, concerned of the possibility that Great Britain could be occupied as France, Poland, Holland, Hungary and other countries had been, wanted to give fascist Germany no insider breaks with he presence of Nazi sympathizers, people who had left Germany to settle in England. Alternately, German prisoners of war, incarcerated in Britain.

He might have considered the threat posed by members of the British aristocracy and literary set who felt huge admiration for Hitler, but he turned his attention to those of Austrian or German ancestry solely.

Unsurprisingly, there were young Jewish men who had escaped Germany, sent by their concerned families to safety, who thought they had found haven on their arrival in Great Britain. Eric Koch was interned in Sherbrooke; he had been studying at Cambridge University when Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered the internment of German and Austrian nationals in Britain following Holland's Nazi invasion.

"Churchill wanted to demonstrate to one and all that the time of appeasement was over and a new wind was blowing, so he decided on the internment of enemy aliens", Mr. Koch explained in an interview from Toronto. Britain decided it couldn't possibly house enemy aliens on its soil as a potential fifth column and so persuaded its former colonies of Canada and Australia to take the aliens as internees. Loyal Canada agreed to take 7,000 "dangerous type" civilians and prisoners of war.

Among them were about 2,300 men whom British tribunals were adjudged to pose no risk. Among the Jewish refugees there were communists and homosexuals who had themselves fled persecution in Germany. Canada's immigration policies at the time was to deny entry to Jews; had it been known that Jews were among those to be interned, Britain understood they would have been rejected, so they were mute on the identities of the internees.

Alfred Bader’s internment shirt from Camp I in Ile-aux-Noix, Quebec, circa 1940-1941. Bader arrived in Canada aboard the S.S. Sobieski and was interned for 15 months. (Courtesy Alfred Bader / Photo by Jessica Bushey)

The internees were given shirts with huge red circles on the back to be recognized as targets for the guards in the event of a possible escape. The British commissioner of prisons was dispatched to look into conditions prevailing in the camps and he characterized the uniforms as degrading. "It was disturbing to find distinguished university professors dressed as clowns", he reported in 1940 to his superiors.

Photograph of an internee in a camp uniform, taken by internee Marcell Seidler, Camp N in Sherbrooke, Quebec, circa 1940-1942. Seidler secretly documented camp life using a handmade pinhole camera. (Courtesy Eric Koch / Library and Archives Canada / Photo by Marcell Seidler)

The fact that accomplished intellectuals were among the internees turned out a blessing for the younger men. Study halls were established in the makeshift camps, and the young men were instructed in areas as disparate as religion, and physics. Among those internees a disproportionate number proceeded after the war to become illustrious professionals in academia, law and the arts. They included two Nobel laureates.

Erwin Schild, 93, rabbi emeritus at Adath Israel Synagogue had arrived in Quebec City in July 1940, spending almost two years in camps in Quebec and New Brunswick. "I was 20 or 21 years old and here I am imprisoned, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. What am I doing here? I didn't know what was happening to my parents and to my sister. Psychologically, it was very, very difficult."

Tyler Anderson/National Post    Rabbi Erwin Schild, who arrived in Canada during the Second World War and was placed in an internment camp in Quebec, poses for a portrait at Adath Israel synagogue in Toronto, Feb. 6, 2014.

"To be a Jew locked up as a suspected Nazi has a quality of anguish that is different from being locked up because of a bureaucratic bungle of an asinine law, or mistaken identity, or false suspicion. For all these terrible possibilities, there are precedents in our experience or concepts in our imagination. But not for the infuriating absurdity of being interned by your allies as the enemy, whom you hate even more than they."