Spirit Quest

‘At the basis of most religions there is a mandate to help the stranger’

By The Rev. Dr. Hanns Skoutajan

An article in The Toronto Star (May 27) dealt with the tragedy of the SS St. Louis loaded with some 900 Jews who had left Germany in search of asylum. At that time, May 1939, the Nazis were still intent on cleansing their country of Jews. The Holocaust came later. 

The ship attempted to discharge its passengers in Cuba but that country was being run by a highly anti-Semitic leader who cancelled their visas while in transit. The ship then headed for the United States. The Americans also refused entry and sent police ships out to guard the St. Louis lest anyone jump ship literally.

The captain, a very conscientious man, decided to try Halifax. Fred Blair, the Canadian director of immigration, an outspoken anti Semite refused them entry and even bragged about keeping the Jews out. “None is too many,” he is quoted as saying. Those words became the title of a book by Abella and Troper, published in 1987 that documented Jew hatred.

The ship had now no alternative but to return to Europe where the passengers gained entry to Britain, France and Belgium. Unfortunately with the beginning of World War 11 Hitler’s forces caught up with the passengers of the St. Louis in Belgium and France. These died in the extermination camps of Germany.

This incident is of personal interest to me because  the Canadian government rather than accept the Jews chose to accept other refugees that were fleeing the Nazi takeover of the Sudetenland, the ethnically German part of Czechoslovakia. Most will recall Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister triumphantly returning from Munich in October of 1938, having procured “peace in our time... peace with honour” by giving  Hitler the green light to march into Czechoslovakia.

In Canada Vincent Massey, who later became governor general,  wrote a letter the Prime Minister Mackenzie King strongly suggesting  that the Sudetens were “a superior type than those  (the Jews) whose entry to Canada was being discussed.”

My parents and I were among the 500 Sudeten families who arrived in Canada between April and August of 1939. I vividly recall the day before our landing in Halifax. Immigration questionnaires were distributed to all passengers. One of the questions had to do with religious affiliation.

Word was passed around that everyone should claim to be either Roman Catholic or Protestant, but under no circumstances Jewish or atheist.

From Halifax we were transported by train across Canada and settled on abandoned homesteads in northern Saskatchewan and British Columbia. 

In my book Uprooted and Transplanted and in the documentary film , Hitler’s German Foes based on the book I describe our escape and immigration to Canada. 

I recently visited the Czech Republic in order to attend the funeral of Tom Gregor, the director of the documentary film. He himself had also been a refugee after the war and came to Canada where he taught film at Ryerson and Humber College.

Walking the streets of Prague awakened old memories of difficult times. I also saw the walls of the Terecin concentrations camp which was a gathering place for Jews and known anti fascists who were later transported to Auschwitz. 

It seems to me that most of my trips are never tourist romps, sight seeing or even family visits, they inevitably bring me up against memories. They make me aware how lucky I was to come to these shores and to be admitted albeit to an extremely hard and unusual way of life under primitive conditions. 

Canadian immigration policy has radically changed over the years, nevertheless it has continued to give preference to the young and the skilled, those who would make a significantly positive contribution, in other words as Massey said “superior types.”

I was impressed that the leaders of the Anglican and United churches spoke out strongly against Canada’s anti-Jewish immigration policy back in the prewar days. Indeed, churches all across our country have been at the forefront in helping immigrants and refugees arriving on our shores, regardless of the country they came from, even those seeking asylum from the U.S.A. during the Vietnam war.

At the basis of most religions there is a mandate to help the stranger. I believe that this spirit is alive in our time.   
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