May His Memory Be As A Blessing

"Irving Abella was a quintessential Canadian Jewish leader."

"He was wise, articulate, engaging, bold and forward-thinking. His inspirational leadership has become his legacy."

"For me, he was my mentor and teacher. May his memory always be for a blessing."

Bernie Farber, former CEO, Canadian Jewish Congress, chair, Canadian Anti-Hate Network

Irving Abella, Professor Emeritus, York University. speaks during the media preview of St. Louis – Ship of Fate at the Canadian War Museum. in March, 2018. Photo by Errol McGihon /Postmedia

 

During the Second World War and the Holocaust years, Canada, like many other free and democratic countries was no friend of the diaspora Jewish community in their worldwide dispersal, nor where Jews made their home in Canada. Undeniably, Canada was a typical European-centric racist society at the time. Canadian hostility and distrust of and unequal treatment of Blacks, Indigenous, Chinese, Japanese and Jewish communities within Canada was inhumane in denying them equality within the larger community. 

Irving Abella -- who at age 82, after a distinguished life as a scholar, historian, academic, author and activist died following a long illness -- wrote a seminal accounting of Canada's record during the most anguished period of Jewish existentialism. It was thanks to his revelations of Canada's dire shortcomings in humanitarianism and his urging of later governments in Canada to aid people fleeing the spectre of group-targeted death due to ideology, religious persecution, conflict that a turnabout occurred.

Writing an accounting of Canada's war-time response to the desperate pleas of Jews attempting to escape the genocidal schemes of Nazi German, Irving Abella co-wrote None is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933 - 1948, with co-author Harold Troper. Revealing details of the forgotten episode of Canada's anti-immigrant stance at a time when Jews were viciously persecuted by a horrendous group death threat now known as the Holocaust which claimed six million European Jewish lives.

Canada -- during the years 1933 when the German Nazi party rose to power, and 1948, when the state of Israel was created -- accepted a mere five thousand Jewish refugees to enter the country, described as the "worst record of any nation in the world". In 1939, the German ship MS St.Louis with almost a thousand desperate Jewish refugees aboard hoping to find refuge from Nazi genocidal intentions was refused docking privileges in one country after another, nor were those on board given entry to Canada. 

 

Refugees aboard the St. Louis wait to hear whether Cuba will grant them entry. Off the coast of Havana, Cuba, June 3, 1939.  National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD

An official in the government of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King at the time, Frederick Blair, responsible for the government's immigration portfolio, rejected appeals by Canadian leaders to permit the ship to dock in Halifax. Blair's blatant and blistering distaste for Jews was in evidence as the architect of restrictive immigration policies, and had the imprimatur of the Liberal government of William Lyon Mackenzie King. 

'Refugees aboard the St.Louis as they arrive in Belgium in 1939.  Courtesy American Joint Distribution Committee

 

The book detailing events of Canada's response to the dire situation facing European Jews and the government's refusal to admit entry to any attempting to escape their fate became "an ethical yardstick against which contemporaneous government policies are gauged". Former immigration minister Ron Atkey in the late 1970s was sent an advance copy of some of the book's chapters at a time when the country was debating how it might react to the crisis of Vietnamese refugees, known as Boat People.

Reading details of the former government of Canada's lack of humanitarian decision-making to give aid to the Jews of Europe, Immigration Minister Atkey decades later saw to it that Canada welcomed tens of thousands of new citizens, the very Boat People whose plight faintly echoed that of Jews during World War Two, desperate to find haven. At the opposite side of the ledger, Irving Abella found it contemptible that postwar Canada accepted thousands of Nazi collaborators and war criminals.

 

Waffen-SS Division "Galicia" was formed by the Nazis in order to support the falling regime. The Ukrainian Central Committee supported this idea with enthusiasm despite the cost of collaboration with the totalitarian regime and its criminal nature.

 

Members of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, Ukrainian fascists who found common cause with the Third Reich's aspirations -- as nationalists and fascists themselves. Ukrainian fascists who shared the Third Reich's contempt for Jewish lives and lent themselves to rounding up and murdering Jews as an assigned duty they found quite acceptable to their own core racist values.

In stark contrast to the locked gates-of-entry Jews found looking for a home in Canada, Irving Abella pointed out that entry to Canada was relatively straightforward for SS members. Their trademark tattoo indicating their anti-communist sentiments worked in their favour. As a professor at York University, Irving Abella spent his career teaching history, holding the position of Shiff Professor of Canadian Jewish History at the conclusion of his teaching career.

He was married to Rosalie Silberman Abella, former Supreme Court of Canada justice, the first Jewish woman and first refugee to sit on the Supreme Court of Canada. Irving Abella held honours making him a member of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario as well as being a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada; awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002.