All Canadians have a stake in ensuring the history that led to the Holocaust is not repeated. But since Oct. 7, we feel like we are on the brink.
Earlier this autumn, I was approached by a group in Ottawa that organizes “banned book nights,” asking me to read from a book that has been banned or taken off the shelves in some Canadian public schools and libraries. Given the stark rise of antisemitism globally since Oct. 7, I decided to read from The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, a book that haunts many of us who are grandchildren of Holocaust survivors:
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Wednesday, 8 July, 1942. It is just as if the whole world has turned upside down … Into hiding — where would we go, in a town or the country, in a house or a cottage, when, how, where … These were questions I was not allowed to ask, but I couldn’t get them out of my mind.
Thursday, 25 May, 1944. There’s something fresh every day. This morning our vegetable man was picked up for having two Jews in his house. Its’s a great blow to us, not only that those poor Jews are balancing on the edge of an abyss, but it’s terrible for the man himself.
The world has turned topsy-turvy, respectable people are being sent off to concentration camps, prisons, and lonely cells, and the dregs that remain govern young and old, rich and poor.
For those who aren’t familiar with Anne Frank, she was a Dutch Jewish girl whose family hid from Nazis in a “Secret Annex” in Amsterdam. Two months before the liberation of Holland, their hideout was raided and she and her family were brought to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where Anne, like six million other Jews, was killed.
For many Jews in Canada and elsewhere, whether we are secular or religious, progressive or conservative, the horror of the Holocaust is part of our intergenerational trauma. The world turned upside-down for us on Oct 7, 2023, as antisemitism again surged. There are chilling parallels between Holocaust denial and the speed with which many people jumped at the opportunity to dismiss or deny the atrocities that took place as Hamas committed the largest massacre of Jews since the Second World War.
We are disappointed but not surprised by how easy it is for some of those we thought were allies — politicians, colleagues in medicine and academe, fellow community advocates, neighbours, people whom we thought of as friends — to turn away, to call for boycotts of Jewish businesses, or alienate Jewish peers, constituents, classmates, and friends.
Many Jewish doctors, teachers, professors, business owners, artists, seniors and youths are lying low. Some Jewish children are staying home from school. Parents do not want to make trouble for their children by going to their teachers, let alone going to the authorities or the media to describe antisemitics incidents their children have endured. As a Jewish trustee at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, I am told by families that Jewish high-school students have been targeted by some classmates who use racist slurs, greet them with “Heil Hitler” or intimidate them on social media.
Schools and universities have brought in speakers who question the legitimacy of the State of Israel, who excuse or deny the massacre of Jews. Jewish university students and faculty sit quietly through inappropriate conversations. You won’t hear about their fear and sadness. Across Canada, the news will report only a small fracture of the hate, mostly documenting graffiti, vandalism and violence, such as the most recent attacks on Jewish community centres, synagogues, and schools in Montreal.
People have said, what good does speaking out do? The pushback against Jews speaking about antisemitism can be worse than the original harassment. In Toronto, nonetheless, Jewish physicians boldly wrote a collective public letter about antisemitism.
In Ottawa, the antisemitism is just as bad, but we have been less public. A common response when Jews do speak about antisemitism is that we are silenced, dismissed. “Stop complaining,” we’re told. “You don’t understand racism,” we’re told. “You don’t understand genocide.” Jews are demonized, told that we are too pushy, too noisy, too powerful, too aggressive, ironically told that we are too “white.” For millennia we have been segregated, slaughtered, wiped out in pogroms, driven from one country to another.
Earlier this month, former prime minister Brian Mulroney spoke to the Canadian Jewish Congress. He acknowledged that antisemitism is deeply entrenched in Canada. In the 1930s, prime minister MacKenzie King did not want Jews to “get a foothold” in this country. Jews were turned away as immigrants, government policies limited property ownership, put quotas on university entrance, barred club membership. “This latest surge of antisemitism did not suddenly surface out of nowhere. It is part of the historical continuum that was only briefly interrupted following the Second World War,” Mulroney said.
Today, thousands of Jewish Canadians are expected to gather on Parliament Hill. Will you bear witness to our pain? Will you listen to us speak? We will be there to support each other. We will look to non-Jewish Canadians as allies. We will also call on our leaders to pull us back from the edge of this antisemitic abyss.
Our grandparents told us how fragile safety is, how Anne Frank’s story and their story unfolded. That cannot be our story. So we will gather, and let Ottawa know that this is not OK.
Dr. Nili Kaplan-Myrth, MD, PhD, is a family physician and school board trustee in Ottawa.
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