Transnational Yekkishkeit from a Canadian Perspective

Abstract

For a long time, Canada was one of the lesser known destinations of Jewish emigration from Nazi-occupied Europe. Indeed, unlike its southern neighbour, Canada in the 1930s offered limited opportunities for immigration. Approximately 6,000 German-speaking refugees (Jews and non-Jews) were allowed in. This figure includes about 1,000 ‘enemy aliens’ (most of whom were refugees) who had been interned in the United Kingdom in 1940 and then transferred to the Dominion of Canada. Several recent publications have put the “‘Land der begrenzten Unmoglichkeiten’”, the “land of limited impossibilities” (as one of my interviewees once put it), on the map of exile studies. In this paper, I shall focus on the German-speaking Jews (Yekkes) who found refuge in Canada, in order to show how they positioned themselves within the Jewish community in Canada and whether they created and transmitted a form of collective yekkish memory; how they perceived and positioned themselves within a transnational space linking Montreal and Toronto to London, New York and Jerusalem. My purpose is to emphasise immigrants’ local lives in transnational cultures, to help map the migrant experience, and to use a transnational lens from a Canadian perspective.