From the 500 local Jewish men and women who served in a Canadian military uniform in the Second World War,…
The coronavirus has forced the cancellation or limitation of most of the world’s highly-anticipated ceremonies to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. For my part, all of my scheduled lectures and public events here in Canada this spring have been postponed or called off entirely, due to the pandemic. However, the milestones of the liberation of Holland and #V-EDay75 are far too important to ignore. That is why I want to pay tribute, virtually, to the vital contribution of Canada’s 17,000 Jewish fighting military personnel to winning the war against Hitler, and rescuing the survivors of the Holocaust.
As the world commemorates the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII, and Remembrance Day under COVID-19, Toronto author and journalist Ellin Bessner speaks (by Zoom) at the Beaches Hebrew Institute about Canada’s Jewish community and their contribution to winning the war. Bessner’s book “Double Threat: Canadian Jews, the Military and WWII” tells the little known story of the 17,000 Canadians of Jewish faith who put on a uniform, defeated Hitler and rescued the survivors of the Holocaust. Her research uncovered many important stories about the Fascist supporters in the Beaches area of Toronto at the time, including from the various beach clubs in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as interviews with young Jewish men from the neighbourhood who would go on to enlist.
As the world commemorates the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two, author and journalist Ellin Bessner brings her new book “Double Threat” to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton. As Hamilton and indeed, the world marked the end of the fighting, hundreds of Canadian airmen and soldiers were still hard at work overseas with a new humanitarian mission: rescuing the survivors of the Holocaust, including in Germany at the site of the notorious Nazi death camp Bergen-Belsen.
Although Canada’s Jewish community was a tiny minority in 1939 when Canada declared war in 1939, the Jewish community of…
Although the Second World War was a man’s war, and 17,000 Canadian Jewish men served, a tiny but important group of 270 Canadian Jewish women dared to overcome their family and community’s disapproval, the lower pay, and sexual harassment, and joined the Canadian forces after 1941. That is when the government allowed women to enlist. They served in many jobs at home, and behind the front lines, overseas.
Usually I don’t talk about myself when I speak to audiences around the world about “Double Threat: Canadian Jews, the…
Author and journalist Ellin Bessner speaks to one of the largest Men’s Clubs in Montreal, whose members include some of…
Esther Thorley’s brother Meyer Bubis, who was eleven years older than her, had enlisted in the Toronto-based Royal Regiment of Canada on Sept. 7, 1939, mere days after Hitler’s Nazi forces had invaded Poland to start WWll. Bubis would eventually be part of the ill-fated Allied raid on Dieppe, France in August 1942. After he was killed, Thorley waited for her eighteenth birthday in June 1943, and enlisted. She was one of only 270 Canadian Jewish women to wear a uniform for Canada in WWll. Thorley, an Ajax, Ontario resident, died suddenly on Feb. 13, 2018.
D-Day and the Untold Stories of Canada’s Jewish Fighters in Uniform in WWII Canadian author and journalist Ellin Bessner…