Our Jewish Brethren: Christian Responses to Kristallnacht in Canadian Mass Media

The discussion of Canadian responses to Holocaust has unfolded largely in response to work of Irving Abella and Harold Troper. In their study, None Is Too Many. Canada and Jews of Europe, 1933-1948, they argued that although some organizations and high-placed members of religious groups, such as Anglican and United Churches, actively campaigned on behalf of Jewish refugees, most Canadians seemed indifferent to suffering of German Jews and hostile to their admission to Canada. (1) Their book takes its title from now famous response of leading Canadian immigration official in 1945 to question of how many Jewish refugees Canada should take in. Despite Abella and Troper's recognition that there were a handful of concerned, dedicated citizens scattered across Canada, they did not analyze Christian responses to Holocaust in great detail, concluding that the churches remained silent, allowing Canadian federal government to dismiss few voices of Christian protest that did exist. (2) It was this generalization of silence that caused Alan Davies and Marilyn F. Nefsky to survey Canadian Protestant denominational responses to Holocaust. They found mixture of anti-Nazi and, to lesser extent, pro-Jewish figures, but much ambivalence and apathy as well. No sustained universal outcry on behalf of beleaguered refugees ever erupted from either Christian or Protestant rank and file, they argued. Neither Christian nor Protestant Canada spoke with collective voice, (3) and few churches understood true dimensions of evil. (4) Indeed, Canadian Christian community was hindered by an inherent negativity towards Jews and Judaism that embedded itself in classical Christian theology. (5) Other scholars of Canadian Jewish history, such as Gerald Tulchinsky, Haim Genizi, and Janine Stingel, have generally supported findings of Davies and Nefsky. (6) United States historians Robert Ross and William Nawyn arrived at roughly same conclusions when they surveyed U.S. Christian responses to Holocaust. For Ross, despite fact that Protestant press openly opposed Nazi Jewish policy after 1938, there occured another kind of 'silence' that was more disturbing in its consequences, 'silence' that followed lack of intervention on behalf of persecuted Jews and almost total failure of such interventions as were attempted. (7) Similarly, Nawyn concluded that rhetoric predominated over action among U.S. Protestants. (8) Despite their general pessimism, these Canadian and U.S. historians acknowledge that brutality of Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9-10, 1938, aroused widespread outrage against Nazism and some measure of sympathy for Jews. (9) Their brief descriptions of rallies and radio broadcasts suggested that at least some Christians had spoken out for Jews. This sparked our interest to examine more closely post-Kristallnacht reactions in Canada--not least because we also regard Nazi pogrom of November, 1938, as one of significant milestones on road to Auschwitz. (10) We view it as watershed--an event after which no reasonable person in Germany or abroad could downplay ideological importance or political radicalism of National Socialists' Jewish policy. Indeed, Kristallnacht pogrom marks point of transition between escalating Antisemitism of German politics in 1930's and massive violence associated with Nazi wartime Holocaust. In our study of post-Kristallnacht reactions of Canadian Christians, we have sought to broaden scope of source material considered by Davies and Nefsky, who drew primarily upon denominational journals. To that end, we have undertaken survey of nine leading Canadian newspapers in November and December, 1938: The Halifax Herald, The Gazette (Montreal), Ottawa Citizen, The Globe and Mail Toronto Daily Star, Winnipeg Free Press, The Leader Post (Regina), The Calgary Herald, and The Vancouver Province. …

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