The 50th anniversary of the
liberation of Auschwitz is a fitting occasion to address the question: what
does Newfoundland have to do with the Holocaust? If we ask our fellow
Newfoundlanders, most would deny or plead ignorance of any connections. Some
might point to the well publicized existence of such Holocaust survivors as
Moishe Kantorowitz and the Fermans in this community from the 1950s to the
1980s. How else could Newfoundland possibly be linked to such an unspeakable
crime taking place in far-away eastern Europe, a crime that only such barbaric
foreigners as Germans and their collaborators seemed capable of committing?
Wouldn't any linkage be incompatible with our entrenched faith in the
humanitarian tradition of Britain's oldest colony? Haven't we been taught at
home, in school, and by the media to believe that Newfoundland's leaders always
cultivated the best of British values?
Until some twelve years ago when I
began researching the history of 20th-century Newfoundland immigration, I used
to share such sentiments. Newfoundland had always had difficulties attracting
settlers, I believed, because it was so unknown that not even refugees thought
of it as a haven. I had assumed that the proverbial hospitality of
Newfoundlanders had formed the basis of the country's immigration policy and
that anyone willing to come and settle here had been welcomed with open arms.
At first my assumptions seemed confirmed when I discovered that in 1906
Newfoundland had enacted a unique refugee clause as part of its so-called Aliens
Act, an act that remained the law of the land until Confederation in 1949. That
act prohibited the immigration of criminals, the mentally ill, or those unable
to support themselves. But a clause in the act specifically offered asylum to
refugees from political and religious persecution, even if they arrived in
poverty. The only other country enacting such generous legislation for refugees
was Britain (in 1905), and it repealed this law in 1920.
Newfoundland thus had the
distinction of being the sole country in the world where refugees from Nazi
persecution were legally eligible for admission, simply by virtue of being
refugees. Although Newfoundland officials tried to ignore this right to asylum,
the law became known to Jewish refugee agencies. As a result, refugee agents
approached the Newfoundland government as early as 1934. By 1940, the number of
applications by and on behalf of refugees--mostly Jewish ones--had reached an
estimated 12,000.
Among the refugees seeking entry
were doctors, dentists, and nurses willing to establish traveling clinics and
to work in isolated outports needing medical services; there were Jewish
manufacturers proposing to locally produce items that were imported at the
time; there were farmers, engineers, technicians, accountants, scientists,
university professors, etc. The petitions for sanctuary included at least eight
significant economic proposals for refugee group settlement. The proposals
outlined detailed plans for harnessing the hydro potential of Churchill Falls,
developing Labrador's Lake Melville area, and launching fish canneries,
furniture factories, and other industries with the eventual employment of
thousands of Newfoundlanders. One Jewish refugee organization surveying
Newfoundland in 1938 in anticipation of refugee settlement concluded that
"the Jews can take little from a country that is practically bankrupt. On
the contrary, with undeveloped resources and a small population, much can be
contributed by them... Jewish ingenuity will certainly develop these resources."
Although most group settlement
proposals came with assurances of generous financial backing, every single
proposal was rejected. Rejected were also all individual applications for
sanctuary. Time permits me to mention only two examples. Especially telling are
the requests from naturalized Newfoundlanders to sponsor first-degree
relatives. In 1938 Nochau Goldman from Poland and his starving family of four
submitted two unsuccessful petitions to join his sister in Corner Brook. She
was married to Ernest Swirsky who owned a local dry goods store. Frustrated at
being denied entry, Goldman appealed to the Dominions Secretary in London, in
these words:
I would very much
like to say that I recently received a letter from my sister in Newfoundland
informing me that seeing they had only one child, that both she and her husband
were quite willing to take us to live with them, and share with each other as
one united family, and that such would not have any effect regarding the
employment on the Island.
Lord Stanley, if
it's not too much of me to ask, I do plead with you, that you will do all in
your power by the help of God and through faith in Him, and your unfailing
kindness to assist me, in obtaining papers to immigrate if not to Newfoundland,
then please God to England, Canada, or wherever it would be permissible for me
to immigrate, and if such could be granted, then my brother-in-law and sister
will do all in their power to help us in any way.
Stanley requested a review of the
case in St. John's. The Governor of Newfoundland replied that the review did
"not disclose any grounds for varying the decision already conveyed."
In an even more heartbreaking case,
Rose R. Zuber, a prosperous St. John's Jewish businesswoman and naturalized
citizen was denied permission to rescue her parents and two brothers from
Pruzana, Poland. From 1937 to 1939 she undertook five separate efforts and
engaged the leading St. John's law firm of Winter and Higgins. In March 1939,
as a final resort, she appealed to the Dominions Secretary in London, pleading:
My family are all
Polish Jews, and it is because of their increasing fear of prosecution, and the
possible confiscation of their property that they are looking to
Newfoundland... They have no relatives or friends elsewhere outside Poland...
I greatly fear
that...delay...may be serious or even fatal so far as they are concerned and
that they may not be allowed to leave Poland at all, or only after confiscation
of the whole or most of their property... I am advised that my own and my
husband's status as British subjects should entitle my relations to more
favourable consideration than could be claimed by resident aliens, though the
authorities here do not appear to take it into account. I might add that there
is not the slightest danger of...members of my family... becoming a charge upon
the state or of engaging in any business in a way that would be detrimental to
any Newfoundlanders...
The reports I
receive of the trend of affairs in Poland, and the increasing hostility of the ruling
class there towards the people of my race fill me with apprehension , and the
fear of what might happen at any moment. If the utmost you can do is ask the
proper authorities in this country to reconsider this case, or bring to their
attention any aspects of it which might justify prompt and favorable treatment,
I shall be most deeply grateful.
Again, London referred the case for
review back to St. John's. In July 1939 the Newfoundland government replied
tersely that there were "no grounds whatever to justify a reconsideration
of the case, and the decision already conveyed...cannot be varied." The
Secretary of Justice Brian Dunfield based the refusal on a case heard in Privy
Council in 1891 that allowed Australia to turn back Chinese immigrants. This legal
precedent, Dunfield argued, entitled the government "to refuse to receive
the Polish immigrants in question, and its right being absolute, it need not
give any reasons." Dunfield, by the way, served as Newfoundland Supreme
Court Justice from 1939-1960. We can only surmise what happened to Zuber's
family. In their hometown of Pruzana all the inmates of the large Jewish ghetto
were destined for Auschwitz. Our well-known Holocaust survivor Moishe
Kantorowitz was shipped from that very ghetto to Auschwitz where his entire
extended family of 51 persons went straight to the gas chambers.
The reasons given for the denial of
sanctuary did not reflect any consistent criteria and differed from case to
case. In February 1939 a petition on behalf of 1,000 Jewish families, headed by
farmers, engineers, and young merchants from Hungary, was turned down on the
alleged grounds that there was "no prospect of room being found" for
them on the island. The refugee clause of 1906, Newfoundland's senior
commissioner Lewis Emerson confided to colleagues in 1938, was "simply too
liberal in present circumstances." He did not mind that the rejections
were in defiance of British policy specifically requesting the admission of
refugees on humanitarian and economic grounds. Nor did he care for the wishes
of the neglected and tuberculosis- ridden outports. There, the refugees would
have been welcome for providing badly needed services.
Responsibility for the wholesale
exclusion of refugees in defiance of the legally guaranteed right to asylum
rests squarely with Newfoundland's "great" leaders. In the government
of the day, Emerson represented the vested interests of the local professional
and business community. This small ruling elite of merchants, doctors,
businessmen, and lawyers feared competition and consequently considered the
refugees a potential threat to their privileged position. Antisemitism
reinforced these selfish motives. It was as prevalent among Newfoundland's
ruling class and officialdom as in other parts of the western world, as
documented in the papers of Emerson and his deputy Dunfield, and as revealed in
the editorial policy of the Evening Telegram.
In its relentless
denial of sanctuary to Jewish refugees, Newfoundland even outdid Canada, a
country known to have cared little and done less. But while Canada admitted at
least a token number of refugees, Newfoundland practised what Canada's
antisemitic immigration director F.C. Blair preached, namely: "None is too
many." Such countries, to quote historians Irving Abella and Harold
Troper, "share responsibility for the fate of the Jews of Europe."
Newfoundland not only held hope for thousands of would-be refugees from the
Holocaust whose rejection and destruction were also Newfoundland's loss. The
truly sad realization is that Newfoundland was poised for moral leadership with
its sanctuary law. Instead, our past leaders spurned this historic challenge
and ensured that solutions to our local problems would remain elusive to this
day.
It is hard to believe that some can
ignore this harsh reality and keep prodding us to look back with nostalgia to
the presumed glories of lost nationhood. We in Newfoundland can never fully
appreciate the experience of the Holocaust victims. But we can reflect upon how
we could have changed their fate.
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