Larry Zolf counters Brian Mulroney's vitriolic tirades against Pierre Trudeau with a few facts.
Regarding Trudeau's (alleged) or Quebec's (apparent) antisemitism:"He was born and raised in Quebec, but it seems Brian Mulroney does not now — and may never have had — a real understanding of Quebec ethnic nationalism.How else to explain the raft of gaffes in his recently released autobiography, Memoirs: 1939-1993?"
"It may come as a surprise to Mulroney, but nobody in Quebec — or anybody else in Canada — cared about the Jews being slaughtered in Europe, least of all Pierre Sévigny, war hero that he was." (read the full article)
In fact it should be pointed out that Canada's immigration policy on Jews and other non-white and non-Europeans was reflection on the general attitude of many Canadians, not just those from Quebec. The Bennett government's immigration policy was as antisemitic as that of the King government that followed it.
Any student of history knows that very little of the actual plight of the European Jews was known to the outside world. Any suggestion that Jews were being exterminated was treated with incredulity. Nazi propaganda and the general attitudes in the rest of the world about Jews at best left most unreceptive to rumours of extermination, and at worst unsympathetic. It could be said that none of those who went to war did so because of Hitler's Jewish policies.
Only after the war, when the atrocities became known, did most see and understand the full horror of it all.
Even so, many countries, including Canada, partly from guilt and partly from anti-Jewish sentiment, still resisted accepting "too many" refugees. Hence the avid support of the Israeli State. "Let them have their own state, as long as they don't come here".
Any student of history knows that very little of the actual plight of the European Jews was known to the outside world. Any suggestion that Jews were being exterminated was treated with incredulity. Nazi propaganda and the general attitudes in the rest of the world about Jews at best left most unreceptive to rumours of extermination, and at worst unsympathetic. It could be said that none of those who went to war did so because of Hitler's Jewish policies.
Only after the war, when the atrocities became known, did most see and understand the full horror of it all.
Even so, many countries, including Canada, partly from guilt and partly from anti-Jewish sentiment, still resisted accepting "too many" refugees. Hence the avid support of the Israeli State. "Let them have their own state, as long as they don't come here".
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