Holocaust Survivors in Canada by Adara Goldberg

Author:Adara Goldberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Manitoba Press
Published: 2015-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE FINAL MOVEMENT: ISRAELI TRANSMIGRANTS AND OTHER “LATE ARRIVALS”

Before the Holocaust, Morris Faintuch never gave much thought to Palestine. A Polish Jew, Faintuch spent the war years masquerading as an Aryan before capture landed him in Auschwitz-Birkenau. With liberation, the orphaned seventeen-year-old Faintuch faced a difficult choice. As he had aunts, uncles, and a brother in Canada, he was eligible for sponsorship under the close relative scheme, a move that could take years to materialize. Or, he could leave for Palestine with other orphaned child survivors. Impatient to escape from Europe, Faintuch followed the latter path, joined a youth aliyah movement, and immigrated to Palestine in October 1945. He attended school and worked on a moshav (cooperative farm) with other orphaned youth before joining the nascent state of Israel’s national army, Haganah, and fought in the country’s War of Independence, for which he received numerous medals for bravery. But a few years later, Faintuch faced a serious decision: he had contracted a debilitating case of malaria during his army service and his doctor advised him that a change in climate would offer the best chance of recovery. Faintuch reluctantly accepted his brother’s offer of sponsorship and in 1952 he immigrated to Canada as an Israeli citizen.1

By the time of Faintuch’s arrival, the first major wave of postwar Jewish Holocaust survivor immigration to Canada had concluded. This chapter considers the “second wave,” focusing on individuals who arrived as refugees or immigrants from late 1950 until 1955. The discussion stops before the arrival of refugees (including some 7,000 Jews—among them many Holocaust survivors) from the aborted Hungarian Revolution of 1956. It explores how this second movement of Holocaust survivors to Canada, differed from the initial wave, both with regard to demographic composition and the circumstances under which migration occurred.

From the start, the experiences of Holocaust survivors landing in Canada after 1950 diverged from those of the earlier arrivals. Few in the initial wave (i.e., pre-1950) of survivors had attempted permanent resettlement elsewhere prior to arriving in Canada. This group of survivors emerged at war’s end from hiding, concentration or forced-labour camps, the forests, or the Soviet Union, and returned briefly to their pre-war homes. By late 1946, the vast majority had made their way, legally or illegally, out of the Soviet-controlled countries and into DP camps in zones under Western Allies occupation. At this time, opportunities for Jewish DPs to enter Canada remained limited to close relative and labour schemes sponsorship, or the War Orphans Project. Immigration proved impossible for those without a personal guarantee from a relative or potential employer. With few exceptions, nearly the entire first wave of survivors came as bona fide refugees.

Those survivors migrating to Canada after 1950 arrived primarily through one of two avenues, and under one of two statuses. One group consisted of transmigrants from the nascent State of Israel. Citizens and Israeli passport holders, these survivors entered Canada as immigrants. Unable to travel directly from Israel due to a lack (at that time)2 of

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