TORONTO - In 1939, the MS St. Louis, a German ocean-liner carrying 937 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution, was denied entry into Cuba, Canada and the US. The ship was forced to return to Europe, where some passengers found safe haven in Holland and England. Many ended up in France or Belgium, where most perished in concentration camps.

Seventy years later, the MS St. Louis, along with other incidents of Canadian wartime discrimination were memorialized by the federal government through its Community Historical Recognition Program (CHRP).

More than $13 million were granted to 68 projects from the Jewish, Chinese, South Asian, Italian, Ukrainian communities to educate and commemorate Canada’s wartime discriminatory measures and immigration restrictions.

More than 200 people gathered at Toronto’s Villa Colombo recently to celebrate the completion of the five-year project.

Jason Kenney, citizenship, immigration and multiculturalism minister, opened his remarks by quoting Elie Wiesel.

“Forgetting was never an option,” he said. “It is incumbent on us to remember the good we have received and the evil we have suffered.”

Toni Silberman, national chair, B’nai Brith Canada’s Commission on Holocaust Education, served as chair of the Jewish-Canadian Advisory Committee of the Community Historical Recognition Program. Her committee worked with CHRP to choose deserving recipients within the Jewish community.

“It was a difficult process to try to narrow on a meritorious basis some very superb applications,” she said. The MS St. Louis served as a springboard for all the projects that were funded by the CHRP program.

“There were travelling exhibits designed to inform non-urban communities of this period in Canadian history,” Silberman said. “Children’s book, films, text books, DVDs, and databases.”

Sara Loewenthal, a recipient with the Jewish Youth Library of Ottawa, read from her picture book, So Near and Yet So Far: Klara’s Voyage on the MS St. Louis and presented a signed copy to Kenney.

He reflected on the passengers of the St. Louis.

“Those people would have had amazing lives here in Canada. They were returned to Europe – some to perish in the Shoah. So we consecrated part of CHRP resources to researching and remembering wartime immigration records on the Jewish community.”

Stuart Nulman
www.jewishtribune.ca