Canada loves Jews, it would seem...as long as they live somewhere else;
"...he(Pearson) asked Hugh Keenleyside...responsible for immigration matters, to supply him with statistics about Jewish immigration into Canada in the years 1933-1947 as background material for the delegation. The numbers were shameful, especially in regard to the first half of the 1940's, the peak of extermination of European Jewry. In 1940-19, 284 overseas Jews Jews were admitted to Canada: 1941-1942, 111 overseas Jews; in 1942-1943, 31; in 1943-1944, 56: and in 1944-1945, 93.
At the beginning of the Palestine debate in the second session, the delegation asked for further up-to-date information about Jewish immigration and for a "confidential statement" of how the changes lately introduced into Canadian immigration policy could affect the issue. In other words, how many Jews were expected to arrive in Canada among the overall number of displaced persons admitted. This was after the British had suggested that every member of the United Nations should resettle in its' territory an appropriate share of Jewish displaced persons as an "indispensable" part of solving the Palestine problem. Pearson wanted to know if the changes in Canadian immigration policy had met the British suggestion. The Immigration Branch answered that a total of 20,000 displaced persons were allowed to immigrate to Canada, but found it hard to predict how many would be Jewish. It would surmise that 1,000 of them would be Jewish garment workers and another 750 Jews from other professions. A special Order-in-Council to admit 1,000 Jewish orphans was also mentioned, and a "considerable number" of Jews would possibly be admitted on the basis of kinship.
Evidently none of this was very promising for the 200,000 Jewish refugees in Europe. Pearson realized there was only one sensible solution for them; PALESTINE(emphasis mine)"
- Eliezer Tauber, "Personal Policy Making; Canada's Role in the Adoption of the Palestine Partition Resolution", p. 85
trivia;
Q; Let's reduce Canada to the 100 mile strip running along the border with America. Even with those reduced borders, if Canada had permitted an equivalent number of Jews to immigrate, proportional to its' size, as Britain permitted to immigrate to Palestine 1933-45, how many Jews would have been allowed in?
A; 2.7 million
Now one might argue that it would have been impossible for Canada, with a population of around 11 million at the time, to absorb so many refugees in such a short period of time. But somehow Palestine managed.
How many Jews, who might have contributed so much to this country, lie buried in mass graves in Eastern Europe, one wonders...
._,_._,__
0 Have Your Say!:
Post a Comment