None Is Too Many: Canada and the Jews of Europe 1933-1948

'None is Too Many.' Thus spake an anonymous member of Prime Minister Mackenzie King's cabinet just prior to and during WW11 about Jewish immigration to Canada. Thus, the title of this book of shame, written by Professors Irving Arabella and Harold Troper and published by Lester & Orpen Dennys, Toronto in 1982. Despite being a Holocaust researcher, I came to this book very late. In fact, until I read 'Kristallnacht' by Martn Gilbert and checked out a reference, I didn't even know it was on the market. I had, however, heard about the statement: 'None is Too Many.' That sets the whole tone of this book. Although the U.S. also did not have anything close to an exemplary record on accepting Jewish immigrants, Canada's record is even worse. So that, anyone in the U.S.or anywhere else who considers Canada 'a kinder, gentler U.S.' can forget that stereotype right now. The book - and the idiots in the Canadian Federal governement at the time - blame the French, notably in Quebec, saying they were far too prejudiced to allow, ever, the immigration of Jews. Many times in Canada, the French - and their threat to secede from the country - are blamed for policies that the feds won't enact. Although this would be true 10% of the time, it cannot be true 100% of the time. And in this case, it was ministers within the government who were extremely prejudiced. One Jewish person even deposited thousands and thousands of dollars in a Canadian bank on the understanding that this would support him and his family (he could have, at that time, supported most of Canada's small population with the amount) when they immigrated. But after stalling him endlessly, the Canadian immigration office turned down his plea to come to a safe land. I don't think he lived through the Holocaust and I don't know who received his large bank account: no doubt the Feds. Let's not forget that at this time and in the ensuing years, the Germans developed a state-mandated policy to wipe out by murder, all of the European Jews. And Hitler couldn't wait to win the war and also wipe out all of the Jews in North America, he indicated. Six million European Jews were murdered by the Germans and in the meantime, to my shame, the Canadian government did nothing but stall, raise fruitless hope and misdirect. I am so ashamed of my country's record that I am having a hard time finishing this book. As I stated, I am a Holocaust researcher and have read some horrendous records. But this book, I suppose, is too close to home for me. I doubt if I will ever finish it, since the title says it all: for Canada, none was too many. Still, I would strongly recommend this book for all Holocaust researchers. Despite its shame, it does at least set the record straight on Canada's non-role and non-performance when all its space and land - and heart - was needed.

A great country, Canada, but the response to the crisis in Europe caused by the rise of Hitler is a shameful chapter, something almost never talked about for the simple reason that it is not widely known. One cannot read this book without coming to a startling conclusion: that Canada (along with the U.S. and Britain and many other countries) was complicit in the deaths of millions of Jews. The door to this (mostly empty) promised land was slammed shut, with a bureaucrat named Fredrick Charles Blair playing the role of gatekeeper, as good a Nazi as Hitler or Heydrich or Himmler or Eichmann, a straight-laced, stiff-upper-lipped, white Anglo-Saxon male who did everything in his power to keep the legions of anti-Semites in Canada happy by ensuring that the targeted Jews of Europe had no chance of securing refuge on these shores. The details read like fiction, especially when one evaluates this history against the picture that Canada likes to paint of itself today as an accepting, peace-loving, benevolent and humanitarian society. This book documents political ineptitude and bureaucratic blindness at its worst. At times the prose is plodding but the overall read is more than worthwhile.

That first reviewer obviously sums up what the Canadians thought about Jews. What good is letting us into the country AFTER the war?

None is Too Many is a must read for any Canadian as well as anyone interested in Government and politics. It details the tragic events of the Holocaust and the even more tragic actions of the Canadian Government. A real shocker that should be read and passed down over and over again.