history

Preserving our stories

Abrasha Wosk testimonial evening at Congregation Schara Tzedeck March 6, 1977. Back row: Joyce Wosk, Sonny Wosk, Esther Aroni and husband Hymie, Rosalie and Joe Segal. Front row: Abrasha and Chava Wosk. (photo from JMABC L.01598)

The Jewish Museum & Archives of British Columbia (JMABC) has launched its 2026 annual campaign – Preserving Our Stories. Connecting Our Future – an initiative that invites the community to help preserve and share the remarkable stories of Jewish life throughout British Columbia.

For more than half a century, JMABC has served as the steward of British Columbia’s Jewish documentary heritage, preserving hundreds of thousands of photographs, documents, oral histories and archival collections, while sharing these stories through exhibitions, programming, publications, research services and community partnerships.

“History isn’t created only in archives,” said JMABC president Daniella Givon. “It begins with families, photographs, letters and memories. This campaign is an invitation for our community to recognize the importance of those stories and help ensure they are preserved for future generations.”

Funds raised through the campaign will support archival preservation and digitization, oral history recording projects, educational programming, exhibits, collections care, research access and province-wide storytelling initiatives that connect communities.

Throughout the summer and fall, JMABC will also launch a new Campaign Stories series on its website, featuring articles that highlight remarkable people, places and moments from its archival collections. Drawing entirely from existing resources, the series will introduce readers to the individuals, neighbourhoods, businesses and institutions that have helped shape Jewish life here. The campaign introduces a unique community storytelling initiative inspired by the simple idea that every family has a story worth preserving.

Also starting this summer, and continuing throughout the year, JMABC will invite community members to bring a treasured photograph of a parent, grandparent or other ancestor to select public programs and community activities, where they will have the opportunity to create a contemporary portrait that connects their family’s history with the present day. The resulting images will celebrate the enduring links between generations while encouraging participants to reflect on the importance of preserving their own family histories.

“Our archives exist because previous generations chose to save photographs, documents and memories,” said executive director Eli Klasner. “This project encourages people to think about the stories in their own families and the role each of us can play in preserving them.”

photo - Jewish young adults on outing at Capilano River, circa 1917. Back: Myer Franks, left, and Birdie Grossman. Middle, from left: Rose Myers, Essie Raphael, Rose Izen, Leah Franks and Birdie Izen. Front, from left: Sara Jocoby, Etta Koenigsberg, Dick Jacoby and Sadie Jacobs — Jewish young adults on outing at Capilano River, circa 1917. Back: Myer Franks, left, and Birdie Grossman. Middle, from left: Rose Myers, Essie Raphael, Rose Izen, Leah Franks and Birdie Izen. Front, from left: Sara Jocoby, Etta Koenigsberg, Dick Jacoby and Sadie Jacobs. *(photo from JMABC L.00020)*

The campaign complements JMABC’s expanding public programming, including initiatives that will be gradually delivered throughout the province this year.

“Every photograph, every oral history and every archival collection tells part of a much larger story,” said Klasner. “By preserving those stories today, we help future generations better understand the people and communities that built Jewish life in British Columbia.”

To learn more about the campaign, explore JMABC’s online exhibitions or support the preservation of British Columbia’s Jewish heritage, visit jewishmuseum.ca.

– Courtesy Jewish Museum & Archives of British Columbia

Defying expectations

The story of Aloha Wanderwell, an early 20th-century adventurer raised in Qualicum Beach, BC, the first woman to drive around the world – at age 18 – is captured by Victoria Jewish community member Laurel Corona in her newly released novel, Aloha Wanderwell Takes the Wheel.

“I guess I’ve always been a bit of a rebel at heart, and I love stories of women who defied expectations and went off and lived an exciting life on their own terms. Aloha Wanderwell is certainly one of those,” said Corona. “I ran across her in a little book about interesting women in Vancouver Island history. By the time I got to the end of that little three-page profile, I was hooked.”

Born Idris Hall in Winnipeg, Man., in 1906, the family moved to Vancouver Island then to England, Belgium and France. She ran away from her French boarding school in Nice at age 16, changed her name to Aloha and joined the around-the-world automobile expedition of Walter “Cap” Wanderwell. She and Cap eventually married and continued their travels, driving the length of Africa and, on another expedition, across South America, managing to cross the Andes in cars with engines the same size as a ride-on lawnmower today – in an era where there were rarely any defined roads.

The couple intended to continue their adventures by boat, but just before they were set to sail, Cap was murdered aboard their yacht, ending 10 years of travel across five continents.

“But it’s not just about the travel, which was arduous, painful and often terrifying,” Corona said. “My novel is about a teenager coming into a full realization of her power as a woman in the most remarkable of circumstances.”

According to Corona, the key dynamic in the book is Aloha’s relationship with Cap. Ten years older at 26, he was charismatic and wily in how he got around any difficulty that stood in the way. Cap made money for the expedition by making films of their travels and showing them for the price of admission as they went from place to place.

“She was beautiful and statuesque (almost six feet tall) and, over time, it was Aloha the audiences came to see. Over the 10 years they were together, they became quite famous, and she grew from a teenager into a woman confident of her own capabilities and powers,” Corona said.

“She and Cap married a few years into their relationship, mostly to provide legitimacy to their traveling together, but, for me, I think her desire to be wanted, protected and safe left her feeling disappointed with him. The book goes into her issues with abandonment and betrayal by the people closest to her, and I don’t think she was ever sure enough of his love to give hers fully to him.”

Cap, Corona said, could not see beyond his own desires to concern himself with anyone else’s. Their life together ended with his murder in Long Beach, Calif.; how the relationship would have worked out is something that will never be known.

Though she achieved fame a century ago, the story of Aloha Wanderwell is not widely known. When Corona retells the story, audiences express shock that they had not heard about her adventures. Yet, Corona is not surprised.

“History is loaded with women who were out doing amazing things and doing them as well or better than the men around them,” she said. “This has always been inconvenient to those committed to a male-dominated telling of history, and it is only in recent decades that this limited view of history has been enthusiastically rejected by women historians, writers and other thinkers and doers, not all of whom are female.

“In Aloha Wanderwell Takes the Wheel, I decided to mix into a narrative that is mostly in the third person two first-person narrations, one by Aloha’s sister, and one by the detective assigned to the murder investigation of Cap,” Corona said. “I also structured the book around two time frames. The first-person narrations are the way the story of the murder through the verdict in the trial of the suspect is told. The third-person narration provides the backstory of Aloha’s adventures, which forms the bulk of the book.”

Corona is the author of four other historical novels – The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi’s Venice, Penelope’s Daughter, Finding Emilie and The Mapmaker’s Daughter – focusing on women forgotten or misrepresented in history. She has written one work of non-fiction: Until Our Last Breath: A Holocaust Story of Love and Partisan Resistance.

Corona believes her next book, The Intuitive, coming in April 2027, will be of particular interest to Jewish readers. Set in New York in the 1910s and 1920s, the character is a socialite who has lost her husband and son in an accident and is non-functional with grief.

Thinking it may help her recovery, she accepts an offer to go to Ellis Island with renowned eugenicist Henry H. Goddard, to assist in identifying “feebleminded” people, so they can be deported before (presumably) they bring inferior genes into the United States.

“She quickly develops moral qualms about what she has done and, in her efforts to atone for one Jewish family she harmed, she becomes aware of all the social issues her wealth has insulated her from,” Corona said. “The book is the story of her growth from the snobbery, bigotry and antisemitism of her social class into a remarkable woman making genuine contributions to causes affecting women, like suffrage, unions and birth control, and filling her life with love again.”

Corona encourages readers to buy books from independent bookstores to help keep them in business.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

The first Jew buried in BC

Cayoosh Flat (now called Lillooet), in 1865. Cayoosh Flat (now called Lillooet), in 1865. (image from JGSBC)

In the Jewish Cemetery in Victoria, there is a small concrete slab on which is inscribed: “In memory of Morris Price. Killed at Cayoosh B.C. Buried May 6 1861. First interment in this cemetery.” Cayoosh, today the town of Lillooet, was, in 1861, a cluster of about 30 buildings with a reported population of 190 people, most non-British. It lay at the end of a difficult trail from the Fraser River via Harrison Lake and Penticton through a series of lakes and portages.

The murder of Morris Price took place on the night of Feb. 1. His body was discovered in his store the next morning with “his throat cut from ear to ear … his nose broken and his buttocks mutilated … numerous stab wounds in other parts of the body amounting to 25 in all,” according to the British Colonist correspondent. The correspondent further wrote: “He was interred today [Feb. 3] by his fellow Masons with every mark of respect and deep-felt sorrow.”

The perpetrators were quickly identified as three members of the Shuswap First Nation from the Big Bar area, north of Lillooet. On April 12, Justice Matthew Begbie held a trial of the three and found them guilty. Two, who took part in the murder, were sentenced to death, while a third, who had stood watch, was sentenced to a year’s hard labour.

Although Price’s body had been buried in Cayoosh, this proved a temporary arrangement, as Masons in Victoria raised money to transfer his body to Victoria. The funeral took place on May 6 with “Masonic honors and Jewish rites” and with many participants “who had long known and deeply respected their deceased brother.”

image - Morris Price’s grave marker in the Jewish Cemetery in Victoria — Morris Price’s grave marker in the Jewish Cemetery in Victoria. (image from JGSBC)

The cemetery records state that Price was born in Kepten, Germany, although no town of that name has ever existed. On Nov. 1, Jacob St. Losky of Victoria, Vancouver Island, was granted probate for Price’s estate, as he was “the natural and lawful Brother and next of kin” of the deceased.

In late 2024, Martin Friedland, emeritus professor of law at the University of Toronto, who was studying the criminal case that resulted from the murder, approached the Jewish Genealogical Society of British Columbia (JGSBC) and asked: “Who were Morris Price and Jacob St. Losky?” What follows are the answers to that question.

Other than the probate records, there was no mention of Jacob St. Losky in any of the local newspapers or records. The estate administration files that usually accompany the probate are not in the BC Archives, so the estate’s net worth or how St. Losky disposed of its contents aree unknown. Further searches for St. Losky revealed two UK records: In 1847, he was trading as a cigar manufacturer and importer in Bishopsgate in London and, in 1858, he arrived at the Port of London from Amsterdam.

The name St. Losky was exceedingly rare and only one other UK family had it. Samuel and Hanna St. Losky, who had married in December 1848, were Orthodox Jews in the upper echelons of British society. There was no mention of Samuel St. Losky in any records before the marriage, but, in the early 1850s, he formed a cigar manufacturer and importer in London named Levy Brothers & St. Losky, which also traded as St. Losky, Levy & Co. in San Francisco. This branch of the firm was wildly successful and remitted tens of thousands of dollars of specie to London.

Further searching revealed that Samuel St. Losky’s father was Hirschel Schenkolowsky of Kempen in Posen, Prussia. “St. Losky” was clearly a made-up name created to ease their way in British society. Was the same true of Jacob? Indeed, it was – Jacob Szenkolowski, an American citizen, born in Kempen, arrived at the Port of London on Sept. 27, 1844, after which he seems to have adopted the St. Losky pseudonym. He became a UK citizen in 1847, which meant that he would automatically have been a citizen of any of the UK colonies, including Vancouver Island. Jacob later became an agent for Levy Brothers in 1859 and 1860. The last listing before his appearance in Victoria is a record of “Jacob St. Losky of New York” buying $11,000 of US government debt.

Searching the records found no entries for either Samuel or Morris Szenkolowski (variant spellings included). The breakthrough came when a JGSBC member discovered a newspaper listing acts passed in the Mississippi legislature in January 1846. One line read: “To change the name of Morris Shenkloski into that of Morris Price” – providing the key to understanding the family’s history.

The first record of Morris is dated 1840, when he, under the name Shenkloski, applied to become an American citizen in the state of New York. He had arrived in America five years earlier and, at the time of his naturalization, was 23, having been born circa 1817. Samuel, who also used the name variant Shenkloski, signed the naturalization document as well.

The name Morris was also a pseudonym. Kempen Jewish community records before 1825 do not exist; Morris was almost certainly named Moses at his bris, and is likely to have used the secular name Moritz, as was common in Prussia at the time. From other sources, it is clear that Morris, Samuel and Jacob were sons of merchant Hirsch Szenkolowski and his wife Jette Jereslaw.

Samuel Shenkloski became a US citizen in September 1843, aged 32, and obtained a passport in August 1845, while Jacob Szenkolowski, aged 30, became a US citizen in July 1843 and applied for a passport the same day. There is no evidence that Morris ever obtained a passport.

Morris and Samuel were shopkeepers in New York. A city directory from 1840/41 lists “Shenkloski S. & M. drygoods, 30 Maiden-Lane.” The store does not appear in any subsequent directory, suggesting it was short-lived, a characteristic of many subsequent stores that Morris was involved with.

After his sojourn in New York, Morris Shenkloski next appears in a newspaper listing of peddlers licensed to operate in Georgia from April 1841 to April 1842. This listing also gives some details of Morris’s physical features. The record shows that he was relatively short, 5’ 4 3/4”, with black eyes, black hair and a dark complexion. His two brothers’ passports show that they had similar features. Samuel was an inch taller and Jacob the same height; both had dark hair and complexions, and hazel rather than black eyes.

Over the next few years, Morris opened a number of short-lived stores in the southern United States. Adverts appear in Savannah, Ga. (November 1842), Columbus, Ga. (June 1843), Little Rock, Ark. (March 1845) and Van Buren, Ark. (April 1845). All were signed “M. Shenkloski” and offered dry goods, jewelry and sometimes cutlery, “all at the lowest prices.”

The next reference to Morris is as Price at Fort Smith, Ark., a few miles west of Van Buren. Fort Smith was on the border with Indian territory (present-day Oklahoma) and the majority of trade was with the Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations.

The California Gold Rush of 1849 induced Morris to move on. He is listed in the state census of 1852 as “M. Price,” a merchant, aged 35 (born ca. 1817), an American citizen, born in Prussia, whose last domicile was Arkansas, living in the mining camp of Shasta, Calif. In the same census, his brother, Samuel St. Losky, was enumerated in San Francisco.

image - The notice of Morris Price’s death, 1861 — The notice of Morris Price’s death, 1861. (image from JGSBC)

In 1854, Morris was in the small town of Nevada, Calif. “M. Price” had a store selling cigars obtained from St. Losky & Co., San Francisco. The two brothers were collaborating again, as they had in New York 14 years earlier.

The last California reference is an 1856 newspaper listing of letters that had arrived at the post office of Georgetown – one was addressed to Morris Price. Georgetown is where the richest veins of gold were found, but it is unknown whether Morris ever set up a store there.

When gold was found in the Fraser Valley, Morris was part of the flood of Americans who arrived in Victoria, most traveling from or via San Francisco. From newspaper reports after his death, it seems likely that he arrived in Victoria in late 1858, where he established himself. In early 1860, he moved to Cayoosh, where he set up his store and remained until his death. While many Americans returned from the gold fields disappointed, Morris seemed to have set down roots by buying land in both Victoria and New Westminster. Moses Szenkolowski, known as Morris Price, died at age 43, a well-liked and highly respected member of BC pioneer society.

There are no records or newspaper entries about Jacob St. Losky/Szenkowloski after the probate was issued in 1861 and what happened to him remains a mystery.

Samuel St. Losky outlived his brother by only a few years – he died in London from kidney disease in 1864, aged 52. JGSBC was able to find one of Samuel’s great-great-great-grandchildren in the United Kingdom to share these findings about his family.

This is an abridged version of the story and the research that uncovered it. Readers interested in the full details, and who would like to see pictures of the original documents, can visit the Presentations section of the JGSBC’s website, jgsbc.ca.

David Scriven is a long-time member of the Jewish Genealogical Society of British Columbia and sits on its board.

Football and its roles

On June 24, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre hosted The Dual Role of Football During the Holocaust, an online conversation with Paul Salmons, Kevin E. Simpson and Liz Berger, three scholars on sport and its place in modern Jewish history.

photo - Paul Salmons — Paul Salmons *(photo from vhec.org)*

Salmons, an historian and curator, began with a grim chapter in football’s story: the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Upper Austria, where, from 1938 to 1945, some 200,000 prisoners were held and 100,000 died.

Immediately outside the camp, said Salmons, a football (soccer) field was constructed through the labour of the prisoners. SS soldiers formed a team that played league games on the pitch from 1943 to 1945.

Players, fans and officials would have had a clear view of the camp’s infirmary, where sick and dying prisoners were quarantined to prevent the spread of disease. There are reports, Salmons said, that the dead were taken out of the infirmary, past the field while a game was being played and up a pathway towards the gates of the camp. Additionally, he said, there were reports that the stench of burning bodies from the crematoria permeated the surrounding areas for the period of the camp’s existence.

“This is a very visible picture of the atrocities that are going on while they are cheering on their team, while they are celebrating those goals,” Salmons said. “What does that do in terms of the attitudes or the opinion of the footballers themselves? These members of the SS, this team of murderers, are being cheered on by the local people. Maybe in the pub that night they’re being bought a drink, maybe people are patting them on the back for the goals that they scored.”

photo - Kevin E. Simpson — Kevin E. Simpson *(photo from vhec.org)*

Simpson, an author and professor of psychology at John Brown University, discussed the prisoner experience at Terezin, north of Prague, a camp that housed Jews prominent in science, the arts and sports, and was used by the Nazis to deceive the outside world into thinking prisoners were treated well.

Football participation at the camp was so widespread that prisoners were able to create a league, Liga Terezin, and teams were formed by the nationality of the player or the particular job they were assigned, explained Simpson.

Female prisoners at the camps would design kits for the players; games were wildly popular and tickets were highly in demand, as photos from the camp illustrate. Hundreds of matches were played during a season, he said. With the liquidation of Terezin in October 1944, many of the players, like the rest of the prisoners, would be sent to Auschwitz, where they would die.

Among the professional players who were imprisoned at the camp was a standout Czechoslovakian goaltender, Jirka Taussig. Simpson cited an interview with Taussig, a survivor who later moved to the United States and would also be known as George Tesar. Of the games, Taussig said, “We were the stars of Terezin. Every Sunday afternoon, 3,500 fans came to watch the league matches. The youth saw us as a model to imitate.

“We gave them hope, and we represented life. In all the misery and suffering, hope was a rare thing,” said Taussig. “We played for them because we knew that shortly they would be sent east, and we felt that we gave them a little spark of light before their death.”

photo - Liz Berger — Liz Berger *(photo from vhec.org)*

Berger, a research consultant with UNESCO, spoke about the postwar period to the present, examining what sport has meant to Jewish communities and what the consequences are when that meaning is denied or weaponized.

“Sport is never just athletic competition. It’s one of the main domains through which societies talk about and express and sometimes form their deep values,” she said. Sport is a powerful tool for “communal recovery, identity transmission and the assertion of continued presence and vitality,” she noted.

At the same time, sport can be used as a venue for antisemitic or racist expression. Antisemitism in sport can be viewed as an indication of a society’s broader tolerance for antisemitism.

“Antisemitism in sport is not a lesser form of antisemitism. It’s not minor. It’s a manifestation of how a society relates to their Jewish communities if they have them or their concept of who Jews are if they don’t,” she said.

Berger pointed to football fandom, particularly in Europe, which is organized around tribal loyalties, class identities and historical memories. Fan support in Europe is frequently an expression of who a person is ethnically, historically and politically.

Meanwhile, Berger said, some European clubs, such as Tottenham Hotspur in England or Ajax in the Netherlands, are seen as Jewish teams, despite what might seem at times tenuous connections to the Jewish community. These teams have been the target of antisemitic hostility from the opposing fans and, conversely, demonstrate a form of solidarity with the Jewish community from supporters.

The day of the VHEC webinar happened to be a notable one in Canadian football. A few hours earlier, the men’s national team advanced beyond the preliminary round of the World Cup for the first time in its history. They were eliminated later in the tournament.

The VHEC will host two more football-related events: Football, History and Society, an online discussion with journalist Simon Kuper, on Aug. 25, and Holocaust Education in the Modern Stadium, a conversation at the Italian Cultural Centre, on Oct. 27. To watch the June 24 webinar, go to vhec.org/football_during_the_holocaust.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

The burden of defence

Haredi demonstrators protesting the arrest of draft-dodgers block traffic in Bnei Brak on June 17. (photo by Eitan Elhadez-Barak/TPS-IL)

When I celebrated my bar mitzvah in Toronto in 1968 by reading parshat Shelach Lecha about the 12 spies Moses sent to scope out Canaan, my hometown was flooded with US draft-dodgers who had crossed from Buffalo, NY, to Fort Erie, Ont., to avoid being shipped off to Vietnam. As documented in John Hagan’s 2001 book Northern Passage, for those 50,000 Americans, Canada was the promised land of freedom. Most remained in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver even after Jan. 21, 1977, when President Jimmy Carter granted an unconditional amnesty to the young men who refused to fight in the Vietnam War.

Two things were furthest from my mind when I was 13 – that I should ever heed the age-old urging of Joshua bin Nun and Caleb ben Yefuneh to make aliyah, and that another flood of draft dodgers would arise in my new homeland.

Nearly daily this summer, clashes have taken place between Israel Police and some of the 80,000 Haredi men aged 18-24 who refuse to report to

Israel Defence Forces induction centres. Highways and tram routes are routinely blocked, causing massive traffic jams. In a riot on June 3, scores of ultra-Orthodox protesters stormed the home of Supreme Court Deputy President Noam Sohlberg and his wife Meira in Alon Shvut, a town in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem. Sixty-two Torah students were arrested. Four were indicted on charges of rioting and trespassing with intent to commit an offence. According to the indictment, the rioters threw stones at the villa and tried to break in while the judge and his wife were at home; the rioters chanted slogans like “Nazi” and carried Israeli flags with the Star of David replaced by a swastika.

Police subsequently transferred 19 of those arrested into IDF custody after ascertaining they were draft dodgers. This triggered a new wave of violent protests outside Neve Tzedek Military Prison in the IDF’s Gur base, near the city of Kfar Yona.

As I write this article, the IDF is being crippled by a labour shortage. After three years of conflict in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, reservists are carrying an impossible burden. The number of soldiers wounded or incapacitated by post-traumatic stress disorder is staggering. Suicide among the ranks is soaring. Even as soldiers have reached their breaking point, the yeshiva study halls are packed with those who have illegally ignored their call-up notice.

One needs some historical background to understand how Israel arrived at this situation.

Dov Yosef, the Montreal-born military commander of Jerusalem when the city was besieged by the Jordanian and Egyptian armies, wrote in his memoirs, The Faithful City, of a meeting in May 1948 with Rabbi Mordechai Weingarten and other Haredi leaders. The rabbis urged Yosef to surrender to avoid further hardship for civilians. Yosef responded, you do what you please and I’ll do what I wish, to which the rabbis asked, and what is it your excellency wishes to do? Yosef responded: to shoot deserters.

Indeed, Haredim participated in the War of Independence. Notably, Rabbi Shmuel Tukachinsky, a son of Haredi leader Yechiel Michel Tukachinsky, was killed by Arab Legion shellfire while fighting for Jerusalem in 1948.

As Israel absorbed more than one million Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab lands, the labour shortage was somewhat alleviated. Thus, on Oct. 20, 1952, David Ben-Gurion, the founding prime minister of the Jewish state, held a meeting in the Haredi city of Bnei Barak with Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz (1878-1953). Known as the Chazon Ish, the Belarussia-born sage was one of the Jewish world’s foremost Haredi leaders. Settling in Mandate Palestine in 1933, he held no official post yet was a global address for guidance in Jewish law. While Ben-Gurion was a socialist and atheist, he had a deep if nostalgic sympathy for the lost world of the Eastern European shtetl he had left nearly half a century earlier.

A blog from the National Library of Israel’s The Librarians magazine (blog.nli.org.il) explains what happened, beginning with an entry from Ben-Gurion’s diary: “This morning I went to Bnei Brak for a meeting with the Chazon Ish…. I asked him the question to which I have yet to receive a sufficient answer from my observant friends. We are divided in different ways; in the matter at hand, we are divided by our views of religious tradition. There are Jews like you and like me, how do we live together? How will we become a unit?”

The Chazon Ish cited the talmudic parable (Sanhedrin 32b) about two camels traveling down a narrow path, one carrying a large burden and the other carrying nothing. The rabbi explained that the unburdened camel was to make way for the one carrying the burden. The Chazon Ish said the ultra-Orthodox community bears the burden of the Torah and its commandments; therefore, the non-religious Zionists must defer to them and move out of the way. Ben-Gurion replied: “And what of the absorption of immigrants? What of security? What of establishing the state? Are these not burdens?”

Though Ben-Gurion acknowledged the importance of Torah study, he wanted the ultra-Orthodox to become integrated with the modern state being forged. The Chazon Ish was appalled at what he saw as the desecration of the Sabbath and the Zionist rejection of the yoke of the commandments – a burden shared by every practising religious Jew. He believed that recreating the world of Torah that was annihilated in the Holocaust was the only way to save the Jewish people.

After that October 1952 meeting, the Prime Minister’s Office issued the following statement: “PM D. Ben-Gurion met privately with Rabbi A. Y. Karelitz (the Chazon Ish) in Bnei Brak yesterday. The purpose of the visit was to exchange general views regarding the following issue: How can observant and non-observant (Jews) live together harmoniously in the state of Israel? The question of recruiting women (to the army) was not discussed, and the visit had no relation to current political matters.”

According to the blog, “Contrary to the report, the meeting was much more than a ‘general exchange of views.’ The prime minister made a gesture towards the ultra-Orthodox community by agreeing to continue the exemption of a limited number of Torah scholars from military service. As early as February 1948, before the state of Israel had even been formally established, a limited number of young ultra-Orthodox men were exempted from being drafted into the armed forces, which were already fighting in what would come to be known as Israel’s War of Independence. On Jan. 9, 1951, the prime minister ordered the Israeli army’s chief of staff to exempt yeshiva students from regular service. Ben-Gurion’s meeting with the Chazon Ish did not set the ground for the current ultra-Orthodox exemption from military service, but it did give the controversial early arrangement a substantial political boost and, equally significant – symbolic support.”

When Ben-Gurion called for army exemptions for the 400 yeshiva students in 1949, he could not have known the number would grow to 80,000 by 2026, triggering resentment among their fellow citizens. Nor could he have envisioned that the detainment of even a token number of draft dodgers would set off rioting in the country’s Haredi enclaves.

The Haredi refusal to help relieve the burden of defence has resulted in the attorney-general and the courts reducing the financial benefits that ultra-Orthodox formerly received. In April, the High Court of Justice ordered the state to take concrete steps to revoke key financial benefits from draft dodgers and to move toward criminal enforcement against Haredi men who evade military service. In mid-July, the government’s subsidized national housing program restricted participation in the real estate lottery to those with IDF discharge papers.

A moment of truth is approaching with the Oct. 27 election. If Naftali Bennett forms a centrist coalition, his new government could revoke all benefits for draft dodgers. Short of jail time for 80,000 draft dodgers, these steps could include not issuing passports, driver’s licences and other government documents to those over the age of 18 who don’t have an IDF release form.

Gil Zohar is a journalist and tour guide who lives in Jerusalem.

Sharing stories, advice

photo - Vancouver City Councilor and Deputy Mayor Peter Meiszner holds the city’s proclamation of April 19 as Raoul Wallenberg Day — Vancouver City Councilor and Deputy Mayor Peter Meiszner holds the city’s proclamation of April 19 as Raoul Wallenberg Day. *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

The Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society (WSCCS) hosted its 21st annual Raoul Wallenberg Day event on April 19. Held at the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture this year, its theme was “Confronting Hate Speech and Scapegoating.”

Alan Le Fevre, the society’s current president, opened the proceedings with a brief history of the organization and the annual event.

“Our name is taken from Raoul Wallenberg and Chiune Sugihara, who were two outstanding diplomats who, at great personal risk, saved thousands of Jews in World War II,” he explained. “Our aim is to recognize and remember those who have acted with similar civil courage in the present day.”

Vancouver City Councilor and Deputy Mayor Peter Meiszner read the city’s annual proclamation of April 19 as Raoul Wallenberg Day. He thanked the society “for their leadership in establishing and sustaining this important event and their dedication to recognizing those who act in defence of human dignity.” He spoke of the need for such leadership, when, “across Canada and around the world, we are witnessing the consequences of hate speech, including acts of violence that undermine the safety of our communities.”

WSCCS board member Gene Homel introduced the three speakers, starting with Kim Reclama-Clutesi (Oqwilowgwa), who has served as the elected chief of Kwakwaka’wakw (Qualicum First Nation), and is a Kwakwaka’wakw and Pentlatch knowledge holder and an ethnobiologist.

photo - Kim Reclama-Clutesi (Oqwilowgwa) speaks at this year’s Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society Raoul Wallenburg Day event April 19 — Kim Reclama-Clutesi (Oqwilowgwa) speaks at this year’s Wallenberg-Sugihara Civil Courage Society Raoul Wallenburg Day event April 19. *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

She shared various experiences with hate and injustice, along with examples of resilience, including work that her father did to protect children in residential schools, and his family. She spoke of how she is always seeking connections. “Even if it’s a thin thread, we have to honour those connections…. A lot of what people are doing today is trying to remove those connections and putting us into different places and categories,” especially regarding treaty and land claims issues, she said.

“You have to remember that this began over 500 years ago, with the Doctrine of Discovery and the papal bull that was issued in the late 1400s,” said Reclama-Clutesi. “It gave permission for European colonizers to ‘discover’ lands if they assumed that the people were ‘not organized’ or were in need of ‘spiritual healing’ – I’m paraphrasing dramatically.”

Prior to colonization, she explained, there was food security through traditional land and water stewardship, there were cultural practices that promoted spiritual growth and community cohesion.

Reclama-Clutesi spoke of the need for compassion. “We share this land with many,” she said.

“The bottom line is education,” she concluded. “Not just education as in taking cultural competency courses. It’s about getting to know each other. It’s about going into each other’s sacred places and understanding them. It’s about looking at things with a different lens.” It’s also about calling out those who spread hate and deny injustices that have happened, she said.

The second speaker was Hasan Alam, a human rights and labour lawyer, president of the BC Civil Liberties Association and co-founder of the Islamophobia Legal Assistance Hotline. He addressed the fact that the relationship between the Muslim and Jewish communities has not always been easy, saying it is important to hold onto “our shared histories and our shared experiences.”

He described the power of words to engender hate, to scapegoat and to “other,” as well as the dangers of silence. As a youth in the post-9/11 era, he experienced and witnessed the increased suspicion of Muslims, including instances of detention without due process “not because of anything they had done, but because of their names and what they believed.”

This not only influenced Alam’s decision to become a lawyer, it also taught him a lesson: “Words are not neutral. They carry weight. They shape how we see each other, how institutions treat us and, when weaponized, they can strip people of their dignity, their safety and, in the worst moments in history, their lives.”

Alam discussed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as well as the Criminal Code. He gave the R v. Keegstra case as an example of an appropriate and successful prosecution of someone promoting hatred. His focus, however, was the injustices that occur within lawful boundaries. He noted that “the framework, as it operates in practice, too often assumes an equal playing field” between those spreading hatred and the targeted community. Yet, those with the widest platforms, such as politicians and the media, through apparent credibility and through repetition, can generate broad acceptance of their ideas, to the detriment of the “othered,” he said.

photo - Hasan Alam — Hasan Alam *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

Alam warned that the state is not a “neutral arbiter of free expression.” Those in power can select who gets heard, “punishing certain voices while giving others a free pass,” he said, highlighting Canada’s genocide of Indigenous culture, and the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War.

The public’s “moral panic” can lead to political rhetoric that eventually results in laws or selective application of laws that target specific communities, said Alam. This can have a “chilling effect,” so that people self-censor – “freedom of expression doesn’t have to be formally taken away to be lost,” he said.

“I think real dialogue works,” he added. “The research on prejudice reduction consistently shows that when people who hold mistaken assumptions driven by fearmongering, driven by misinformation, driven by othering, or maybe just limited exposure, when they actually engage with the community they fear, those views do change.”

Making space for good-faith dialogue, where someone can admit they don’t understand something, might be uncomfortable, said Alam, but “that discomfort, when it’s honestly expressed and when honestly engaged, is often the beginning of understanding, and that’s where change lives … when the person in front of you becomes real.”

Marsha Lederman – a Globe and Mail columnist and author of two books – spoke about how Sugihara saved some 6,000 Jews by issuing them transit visas.

Referring to a statue of Sugihara in Los Angeles that was defaced earlier this year with red paint, she asked, “How, in any way, is this statue, is this man, an appropriate target?” It’s understandable to disagree with the actions and policies of the current Israeli government, she said. “It’s quite another thing to self-righteously target a historical figure whose heroic act was saving Jewish lives.”

photo - Marsha Lederman — Marsha Lederman *(photo by Masumi Kikuchi)*

Since the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks on Israel, there has been increased hostility toward Jews and a greater acceptance of speech that is hateful, if not the legal definition of hate speech, she noted.

Acknowledging that “what is happening in Gaza is catastrophic,” Lederman does not believe it should be compared to the Holocaust. Such comparisons, she said, are being used to delegitimize the state of Israel, and she shared some of her family’s experiences and other Holocaust history as proofs of why this line of thinking is wrong.

Lederman has become a frequent target of hate speech and she read out some of the names she has been called, including “Zionist nutcase” and “blood thirsty ghoul,” and, by supporters of Israel, “traitor” and “self-hating Jew”; she has been threatened. “Both sides have accused me of weaponizing the Holocaust, which my parents survived and which my grandparents [and other family] did not,” she said.

Lederman’s strategy for dealing with hate is to continue to exercise her freedom of speech. “I refuse to stop writing about these wars, about antisemitism, about Gaza, about Oct. 7, about Iran, Lebanon, with context, nuance and, I hope, heart, always trying to come at it from the humanitarian middle,” she said.

A panel discussion and question period followed the presentations, and the program concluded with the National Film Board short For Angela, the true story of a Winnipeg mother and daughter who successfully confronted bullying aimed at their Indigenous identity.

The April 19 event was supported by the Peretz Centre and the Vancouver Jewish Film Centre.

Ann Daskal is an independent writer and a member of Or Shalom.

Road to independence

The 96-year-old history of the Jewish Independent, which serves as a continuous record of Jewish communal life in British Columbia, was the topic of the second lecture in the Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture’s 2026 Doikayt Speaker Series.

In a webinar titled “A Labour of Love: A Brief History of the Jewish Independent,” publisher Cynthia Ramsay discussed how the paper might even be more than 100 years old.

In 1925, there was a mimeograph – copies were printed using a hand-cranked machine – called the Vancouver Jewish Bulletin. Its connection to the 1928 mimeograph called the Centre Bulletin, the known origins of the JI, are unclear. Regardless, it wasn’t until the newspaper, by then called the Jewish Western Bulletin, was launched in tabloid form in 1930 that the clock on its history began.

image - Dr. JI Gorosh (pictured here in the Jewish Western Bulletin in 1952) was the first printer and editor of a local Bulletin, in 1925. That publication’s connection to the Jewish Independent’s predecessor, the JWB, first published in tabloid form in 1930, is unclear — Dr. JI Gorosh (pictured here in the Jewish Western Bulletin in 1952) was the first printer and editor of a local Bulletin, in 1925. That publication’s connection to the Jewish Independent’s predecessor, the JWB, first published in tabloid form in 1930, is unclear.

In its early years, the paper had to compete for local readers with a few other publications, both in English and Yiddish. Volunteers from the Vancouver Jewish Administrative Council, a precursor to the Jewish Federation of BC, initially oversaw the running of the paper.

“In 1937, one of the sales guys, Harry Musikansky, had the idea that the paper’s costs could be shifted over to a publisher, and the publisher could get all the advertising and keep all of the revenue, while the council kept editorial control,” Ramsay said.

This model, despite facing continual monetary challenges, endured into the 1960s. While David Sears took over as publisher for a year, in 1939, Musikansky took over the position and held it until 1945. There were several different editors during the publication’s early decades.

One subsequent publisher, Goodman Florence, demonstrated his frustration with trying to please the community in a 1949 editorial, shortly before he resigned. Florence observed that though “readers want everything under the sun and up to date, I have yet to be able to completely sell the simple fact that to do all of this requires considerable revenue.”

In 1949, Abe Arnold took over the reins of the paper as publisher, while his wife, Bertha, handled advertising. “As is the case in the newspaper in the early years, the male counterpart is front and centre. [Abe] Arnold ran the paper, but Bertha was in the background doing a hell of a lot of stuff,” Ramsay said.

The couple stayed on until 1960. Their 11-year tenure was filled with issues concerning revenue and salary, criticisms over the direction of the newspaper’s coverage, and debates on editorial partiality and council’s control over editorial decisions. In the 1950s, the main controversies seem to have been the United Jewish People Order’s expulsion from council (Zionist/right versus left) and kashrut-related letters/ads (orthodoxy versus other forms of Judaism), said Ramsay.

In 1960, Sam and Mona Kaplan came in from Winnipeg to steer the paper, and they would remain at the helm for 35 years. By 1962, the couple were able to turn down the decades-old community subsidy.

“The Kaplans really didn’t want to be at all connected financially to the council. There continued to be a publications committee; however, its role seemed to be reduced. The council still was able to put pretty much any advertising and event listings into the paper, but it seems like they really didn’t have much control over the paper,” Ramsay said.

The Kaplans used this independence to advocate for Soviet Jewry, Syrian Jews, Israel, Jewish education and other Jewish causes and institutions.

Ramsay’s history with the paper started in the summer of 1998, when she arrived as a proofreader. (For a short time in the late 1990s, an American publishing company managed the paper after the Kaplans retired.)

An economist by training, Ramsay’s intention was to return to Ottawa after her temporary position had ended. However, the lure of journalism proved too strong, and she decided to stay. In 1999, she, along with Pat Johnson and Kyle Berger, purchased the paper.

Johnson and Berger eventually moved onto other work, and Ramsay became the sole owner. In 2005, she chose to change the name, for several reasons. (See jewishindependent.ca/oldsite/archives/july05/archives05july22-11.html.)

“We had a contest for names,” she told the Peretz audience. “I didn’t like any of the names, so I picked the Independent. I had wanted to do the Optimist, but found out there was the Delta Optimist already.”

Ramsay shared a quote from the initial manifestation of the community publication, when Dr. JI Gorosh penned an editorial on July 15, 1925. He said the Bulletin would “work steadfastly and faithfully for the welfare of the Jewish community as a whole.” The aim then, as it is now, was to be the medium through which the Jewish community can express its ideals and announce its activities.

“We will strive not to deteriorate into a mere social gossip sheet, but to be a real service paper with a definite place in the life of the community,” Gorosh wrote.

Echoing that sentiment, Ramsay wrote in an editorial for the 95th anniversary issue of the paper: “While not ignoring the hurtful, the divisions, the controversies in our community or the larger universe, we try to cover stories in a way that doesn’t depress and paralyze action, but rather opens the door for solutions or at least positive attempts at change. We don’t want readers to put down the newspaper in despair, but rather to think about what they can do to contribute to a better world, whatever that means to them.”

The Independent may be the longest continually running Jewish newspaper in Canada, as countless other publications across the country have come and gone, or merged, over the last 96 years.

Ramsay said she would like to pass the paper on to another owner or owners after the paper celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2030, when she’ll be 60 and ready to retire.

“I’d like to get it to that point,” she said. “I truly think it is a treasure. I do want its future to be long, so I’ll be very careful with who I pass it on to. Hopefully someone wants it, because it is a labour of love at the end of the day.”

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Canada’s mixed messages

In mid-May, a Winnipeg Free Press article by John Longhurst announced a new online database for research. This open access resource lists the names of German Nazi party members. The article’s target audience: the Manitoba Mennonite community.

As background: Many German Mennonites, previously pacifist, joined the Nazi party starting in the early 1930s. In the article, Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, a Toronto researcher, said the goal of researching and publicizing the records was not to condemn or shame anyone. “The point,” he said, “is to understand what made their choices feel plausible at the time, and what this means for us now in Canada and the US.” Aileen Friesen, who teaches Mennonite History at the University of Winnipeg, said it could serve “as a lesson for our current time.”

I’m concerned about this “lesson.” Nazi membership before and during the Second World War is nothing to be proud about. Still, this does make it easier to understand the views of some Mennonites in 2026.

Some Winnipeg Mennonites often offer public opinions about Israel, Gaza and the war. They’re staunchly against war, but support Palestinian resistance and are against Israelis or Jews. This stance appears in local Mennonite gallery exhibits, fundraising, petitions and protests. It’s on stickers on lampposts near a neighbourhood Mennonite school. While out walking, I peel off “Free Palestine” stickers with cartoon characters doing a Sieg Heil and QR code stickers with “Boycott Israel.”

This “pacifism” chooses a side just like German Mennonites chose the Nazi party. This stance doesn’t examine what these choices mean to the safety of others, such as Jewish Canadians who live nearby. It doesn’t reflect a morality-based Christian religious tradition or teachings from a Jewish guy named Jesus, let alone Jewish texts or culture.

Actions have consequences. This failure to understand logical outcomes echoes throughout Canadian society. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech described Canada’s goals for trade alliances and Canada’s role as a “middle power.” It’s easy to see that this dream is failing on a practical level.

Canada, a “human rights champion,” has an uneven track record. According to United Nations Watch, on April 8, Canada, as part of the 54-nation United Nations Economic and Social Council, “participated in the consensus nomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran” to a committee responsible for funding women’s rights, human rights, and terrorism prevention. The United States was the only nation who objected to this nomination.

Previously, Canada objected in similar UN processes, but, this time, Canada supported the Iranian regime. Iran’s government has enforced a nearly complete internet blackout since Feb. 28. It kills protesters. The regime uses morality police to force women to cover their hair. Female “offenders” suffer arrests, assaults, rapes, torture and murder. Iran’s regime funds terror proxies, including in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen. Yet, Canada didn’t object to the UN nomination.

Canada also has problems fighting terrorism at home. In October 2024, Canada listed Samidoun, an organization supporting Palestinian terrorism, as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code. Eventually, in March 2026, Canada revoked Samidoun’s nonprofit status. Based on federal anti-hate provisions, Vancouver police arrested Samidoun’s international coordinator, Charlotte Kates, for inciting hate and released her with conditions. Apparently, those conditions allow speaking on Iranian state television, attending the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon and continuing permission to live in Canada. (Kates is an American whose status in Canada is not publicly known.) The same goes for her husband, Khaled Barakat, Samidoun’s founder, who was deported from the United States in 2003.

This spring, Canada welcomed international leaders for the FIFA Congress, including Palestine Football Association head Jibril Rajoub, who was previously convicted of throwing a grenade at an Israeli army bus. Israel later released Rajoub in a prisoner exchange, and he committed further offences. Once in Canada, Rajoub publicly refused to shake hands with the FIFA Arab-Israeli representative, Basim Sheikh Suliman. Meanwhile, Canada refused to let the Iranian FIFA representative into the country. These decisions were inconsistent, not the “pragmatic and principled” actions of a country committed to human rights.

If Canada wishes to be a human rights champion, it must work to stop terrorism at home. The government should protect Canadians from danger. Consistent law and immigration enforcement and UN decisions that support these rights would be a good start.

Education’s another way to be an effective middle power. Increase funding for teaching and researching social sciences, including international relations, political science, religious studies and history. These disciplines offer perspectives to better understand global issues and events. Canada must move beyond popular theories like the oppressor/oppressed model that doesn’t adequately explain conflicts beyond biased white/black racial narratives. This oppressor theory fails in Middle Eastern, African or Asian contexts where Western conceptions of colonization, race and power don’t easily apply.

With a broader social science approach, future Canadian leaders could better understand complicated global situations. Educated Canadians with these skills could better examine global economics, conflicts and the geographic strengths.

For instance, our media and government often ascribe outsized power to Israel. This is a common antisemitic conspiracy theory. Israel’s a tiny democracy of 10 million people, with sizeable minority populations. Many also demonize Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. Canada, like many Israelis, may not agree with Netanyahu’s government’s policies, but no other Middle Eastern leaders were elected by functioning democracies. Further, media seldom hold any other Middle Eastern country responsible for its role in the conflict.

Canada’s resources, educated population and multicultural diversity could make it a powerhouse. Yet, its foreign policies don’t use intellectual rigour. Historically, Canada has offered up inconsistent international policies, and bias regarding many of its minorities. Past prime ministers have apologized, promising to forge a better Canada. Instead, Canada’s “oppressor” rhetoric poses as a “peaceful” bystander and blames Israel.

Canada has a tradition of simplistic politics of blame like “war is bad.” Our geographic isolation protects us. It allows Canada to watch hate happen and reproach others without getting involved. Our country must accept that consistently being a bystander isn’t good enough. Failing to condemn or shame those who committed grievous wrongs isn’t good enough. It wasn’t OK to join the Nazi party 90 years ago. It wasn’t OK to reject Jewish refugees. We know where this kind of hatemongering leads. Canada, and Canadians, can do better than this.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for the Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Questions for museum

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights’ planned exhibit Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present, set to open in June, is cause for concern. While what will be in the exhibit remains to be seen and is likely not yet finally determined, the very announcement that the exhibit will happen sends out wrong signals.

What are the boundaries of Palestine? There are a wide variety of proposals, as well as significant differences in the historical territory once called Palestine. Whatever those boundaries are, Palestine is land, not people. Contrary to what the title of the exhibit suggests, the land was not uprooted; it is still there.

The reference to land instead of people is a commonplace of antizionism. The PLO is called the Palestine Liberation Organization, not the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Pervasive antizionist pamphlets, posters, placards and signs say “Free Palestine,” not “Free Palestinians.”

For antizionists, this reference to land and not people is deliberate. For antizionists, the land that is now Israel is or should be Arab, Muslim land. That a Jewish state exists on that land means to them, bizarre as it may seem, that the land itself is not free.

Let’s suppose that the museum was not aware of this connotation and what they really meant to write was “Palestinians uprooted.” One question that arises is “Why only Palestinians?” There were more Jewish refugees from Arab countries and Iran created by the refusal of Arab and Muslim states to recognize the existence of Israel and the consequent wars against Israel than Arabs who left Israel during and after the 1948 Arab invasion. An exhibit that addresses the woes of only one side of an armed conflict is patently unbalanced.

Also what was the catastrophe? The text of the announcement of the exhibit states “Palestinians use the word ‘Nakba’ … to describe their forced displacement in 1948.” Some Palestinians indeed use the word in that way. Others use the word to refer to the creation of the state of Israel. For still others, albeit a minority, the catastrophe was the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel and the rejection of the United Nations peace plan, which would have created an Arab state alongside Israel.

Some of those who since 1968 have self-identified as Palestinians were forcibly displaced during the 1948 war. Others fled the crossfire, as the text of the museum announcement of the exhibit acknowledges. Others still left voluntarily, with organized Arab assistance, heeding the calls of Arab leadership to get out of the way of the Arab invasion so that the invaders could target Jews living in Israel without risk of harming Arabs, a reality that the announcement of the exhibit does not mention.

Who are the Palestinians? Does the term include all those present in the territory of former British Mandate Palestine at least two years prior to the time of the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel and who left during that invasion and their descendants, as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency now does? Or, is it limited to “those persons who acquired or had the right to acquire Palestinian nationality as of 6 August 1924” and their descendants, the PLO proposal of 2012 for Palestinian citizenship?

The text of the museum announcement states that the exhibit would explore “the human rights violations related to the ongoing forced displacement and dispossession of Palestinians.” The immediate violation of those rights after the 1948 Israeli-Arab war was the refusal to allow those who left Israel because of the war to be locally integrated into the neighbouring Arab states to which they had gone, an integration for which UNRWA was created to facilitate. The states of arrival have kept those who left in a permanent pseudo-refugee status, intended as a permanent indictment of the creation of the state of Israel. Will the museum exhibit explore that?

Antizionists, not least Hamas, have engineered a wide variety of human rights violations and atrocities against the Arab population of Israel who left Israel and their descendants in order to shift blame to Israel for the purpose of discrediting its existence. Is the museum exhibit going to explore that?

The suffering of Palestinians is plain to see. The antizionist attacks on the existence of Israel have caused suffering for both Palestinians and Jews. In its exhibition, the museum must show awareness of the antizionist efforts to engineer and manipulate the victimization of Palestinians to discredit the existence of Israel. If the museum were to say nothing about that engineering and manipulation, it would discredit itself.

David Matas is a Winnipeg lawyer and senior honorary counsel to B’nai Brith Canada. He was a member of the original content advisory committee for the museum. Noemi Gal-Or is an international lawyer based in Vancouver.

Hannah Senesh – a unique hero

Douglas Century signs copies of his book Crash of the Heavens at the JCC Jewish Book Festival earlier this year. (photo by Tova Kornfeld)

Douglas Century’s Crash of the Heavens: The Remarkable Story of Hannah Senesh and the Only Military Mission to Rescue Europe’s Jews During World War II is a meticulously researched and spell-binding narrative of Senesh’s life, and pre- and postwar Europe and Palestine.

Senesh, born in 1921, grew up in a middle-class family in Budapest until the Nazis came to power in the 1930s. The rise of antisemitism drove her to join a Zionist youth group and she became obsessed with emigrating to British Palestine. In 1938, she made aliyah to a northern kibbutz, and part of her metamorphosis was to Hebraize her identity, changing her name from Aniko Szenes.

As word of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis started to leak out, Jews in Palestine (numbering about 600,000) sought ways to rescue their European brethren. British Intelligence MI9, tasked with assisting the escape of thousands of Allied POWs, needed people with local language skills and area knowledge. In 1943, Senesh was recruited, one of three Jewish women in a cohort of 37, to be trained as a paratrooper and radio operator. She made her first jump – into Yugoslavia – in March 1944, where she liaised with Partisan groups to carry out sabotage missions. Her hope was to cross into Hungary to save her family and others, but she was captured by Hungarian gendarmes, imprisoned, tortured, tried for treason and executed by firing squad on Nov. 7, 1944.

Sharing details from her diary, which Senesh kept from the age of 13, Century takes readers into her pains, her joys. Her poetry is part of her legacy: “A Walk to Caesarea” is almost a second national anthem in Israel, where many streets, parks and schools bear her name. Ironically, Hungarians know little about her.

The Independent interviewed Century by email.

JI: How did you first become interested in Senesh?

DC: I first learned about Hannah when I was about 8 years old at the I.L. Peretz Shul in Calgary. Our principal was a Holocaust survivor – he’d lived through the Shoah as a boy in Poland. He told us the story of Hannah’s courage, her refusal to give up her secret British radio codes despite months of horrific physical and psychological torture at the hands of the Gestapo.

At that age, I’m sure it was just the broad strokes of the story: she wouldn’t betray her people, she was sentenced to execution by firing squad when she was 23 years old.

Who could understand the concept of martyrdom at the age of 8? Certainly not me. But I did understand that this was a brave young woman who went to her death and wouldn’t beg for mercy “from hangmen and murderers” – those were her exact words.

She refused to wear a blindfold as she faced the firing squad, daring the Hungarian soldiers with rifles to look her in the eyes as shot.

To hear that story age 8 – well, it was amazing. It was also terrifying. Clearly, it’s haunted me since childhood.

JI: This is the first time you are writing about a woman. Was that decision purposeful?

DC: I never thought about it that way. I’ve tended to write books with male protagonists. Technically, though, the first book I ever published – when I was in my mid-20s – was a young adult biography of the Nobel-laureate novelist Toni Morrison.

I conceptualized this book as a military rescue mission – most of the action takes place between late 1943 and late 1944, with a “ticking-clock” thriller pacing – and, yes, in the book proposal, I consciously chose to focus on the three women Palmach commandos and parachutists: Hannah Senesh, Haviva Reik and Surika Braverman.

As I was writing … it became clear that the central storyline needed to be Hannah’s. To a lesser extent, I write about the other parachutists’ missions in Slovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia.

JI: What research did you do for the book?

DC: There are so many primary source documents available. All of Hannah’s poetry, diaries, letters and photographs are in the National Library of Israel archive. There are also many memoirs – most of them out of print – by the various parachutists. There are invaluable oral histories in the U.S. Holocaust Museum and at Yad Vashem. For four years, I felt like I was basically living in archives and military libraries, but I knew that I’d never do this story justice solely on previously published research.

I flew to Tel Aviv in the summer of 2023 to do what we used to call “shoe-leather reporting.” I spent weeks in Israel, retracing the footsteps of Hannah Senesh and the other parachutists. That summer of 2023, I met David Senesh – Hannah’s nephew – a renowned psychotherapist specializing in treating trauma. David was himself a POW and tortured by the Egyptians in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

I’ve become close friends with David and his wife…. They really gave me some valuable personal insights into the family dynamic – and I learned things that have never been in other books.

JI: Was there a particular demographic you were trying to capture?

DC: I set out to write this book for one reader – my daughter, Lena. She’s studying English and wants to be an author. My daughter was 22 when I finished the book; Hannah was 22 when she embarked on her paratrooper mission in March of 1944. My daughter said, “Thank God you’re not writing about another complex, sociopathic antihero! Hannah is a courageous and talented woman who the reader can actually admire.”

JI: How did you arrive at the book’s title?

DC: When I was pitching the idea to my literary agent, I was already writing about Hannah, but it was about to be the centenary of her birth in July 2021 and 150 IDF paratroopers were recreating her jump in a mission called Operation Crash of the Heavens. The title comes from Hannah’s most famous poem, “A Walk to Caesarea,” better known by its musical adaptation, “Eli, Eli.” It’s a very short poem, and Hannah’s next-to-last line in Hebrew is “barak hashamayim.” The literal translation is “the lightning in the sky,” but, to me, the most artful translation is, “the crash of the heavens.”

JI: What has the reception to the book been like?

DC: It’s been wonderful, warm and very appreciative. Even people who know about Hannah Senesh – especially people from Israel – tell me that I introduced stories and things they never knew before.

I’ve spoken at a few schools: the Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn, King David High School in Vancouver, Yeshiva University in New York. When I’m talking to teenagers, I try to contextualize the story by stressing how assimilated the Jews of Hungary were, especially in Budapest. They felt fully Hungarian. But then the series of so-called “Jewish Bills” came into effect, limiting the number of Jews in the professions, setting quotas for university – Hannah had wanted to study education and become a schoolteacher but that became impossible. Ultimately, Jews couldn’t own property, couldn’t have a telephone. They were stripped of all civil rights – by the Kingdom of Hungary, of course, not by Nazi Germany.

I ask high school kids and university students: Do you guys feel Canadian? You’re proud of Canada? Cheer for Canada in the Olympics? What if, overnight, the government said: “You’re not Canadian. Turn in your passport. You can’t go to university. You need to move out of your house – you can only live on certain streets in houses marked with a yellow star. You can’t be out in public past noon.” Why? Because Parliament passed a new law that says you’re no longer a Canadian – you’re a Jew. That means you’re an alien living among Canadians without the rights or privileges of a citizen. How would you feel? What would you do?

JI: You started this book before Oct. 7, 2023. Did that tragic event and its aftermath affect the way you wrote the narrative?

DC: Absolutely. I was deep into the writing process before Oct. 7, 2023. I knew that words like Zionism, Israel and Palestine were hot buttons when I started writing the book, but after Oct. 7, they became third rails.

I tried not to let it affect the way I was writing the book. Of course, seeing all the anti-Israel protests exploding on campuses and in city streets the past couple of years, hearing all the outright distortion of history, it affects a writer’s psyche. As we were designing maps for the book, for example, I insisted that they said, “British Mandate for Palestine” as well as “Eretz Israel.”… While writing the first draft, I had non-Jewish friends asking me, “Doug, what is Zionism?” and I realized that, in the post-Oct. 7 world, it was a critical question. I felt I should let Hannah define what Zionism meant to her. On Oct. 27, 1938, she writes in her diary: “I don’t know if I’ve already mentioned that I’ve become a Zionist. This word stands for a tremendous number of things. To me, it means, in short, that I now consciously and strongly feel I am a Jew, and am proud of it.” Full stop.

JI: If you would have been able to interview Senesh, what would you have asked?

DC: I have so many questions. I don’t want to give any plot spoilers, but there’s one story which hasn’t been told before in previous books. In the summer of 1944, Hannah helped a young Slovakian-Jewish woman named Matilda Glattstein to escape from the Gestapo prison in Budapest. Hannah learned that Matilda was pregnant and devised a complicated escape plan, which means she knew exactly how to break out of the prison and yet she herself didn’t. She saved another woman’s life – but not her own. I’d ask Hannah this question: “If you could rescue Matilda Glattstein, a pregnant woman with no military training, why didn’t you rescue yourself?” I’ve got my own theories, but I would love to ask Hannah.

JI: Why should people read your book?

DC: On the most basic level, I hope they want to read a compelling, exciting and emotional story of heroism during the darkest days of World War II. In hindsight, I didn’t write the book just for my daughter, or just for young Jewish women, or for anyone who aspires to do what Hannah did – become a poet or author and leave her mark on the world. Within the story, I’m asking some more universal questions: What do we mean by courage? Where does moral conviction come from?

We’re living in a crazy era, and it’s worth remembering that there are some causes for which it might be necessary to make the ultimate sacrifice….

JI: Tell me about your collaboration with Kosha Dillz?

DC: Kosha Dillz is someone I’ve known for years and years. His real name is Rami Even-Esh. [He’s] an Israeli-American rapper, filmmaker, social media personality and influencer. I sent him an ARC [advance reading copy] of Crash of the Heavens last October and we just started bouncing around ideas.

We agreed that, with this terrifying rise in antisemitism, it’s the perfect time to make the name Hannah Senesh – poet, paratrooper, Palmach commando – known to all the millions of people in their teens, 20s and 30s who are too busy “doom scrolling” to read the book. I figured, what better way to reach them than to have a gifted modern-day poet like Kosha Dillz breathe fresh energy and inspiration into her story? He wrote some amazing lyrics based on my book and we shot a video on the streets of New York for his song called “Hannah Senesh.”… You can find it on all the streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

JI: Are there any plans to use your book as the basis for a film or play?

DC: Yes, people have been talking about an adaptation, but the world of TV and film adaptations is so mercurial. Right now, we’re working on an adaptation of my previous book, The Last Boss of Brighton, about the life and times of a Soviet-born Jewish mobster – the aforementioned “complex, sociopathic antihero.”… At the same time, one of my earlier books – also about the Mafia in New York City – is being developed for a series…. But we’ll see what happens. Stay tuned.

Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.