When I spoke in Edmonton in November 2019 for Holocaust Education Week, I was touched to have the opportunity to meet the family of Harry Uretzky. He was a young Edmonton student who enlisted in the RCAF in 1941, went overseas in 1942, and, after training to be a bomb aimer/navigator, was killed in action in 1943.
At my talk that night, his niece Karen Hering revealed that her uncle’s war time diary was a treasure: it contained his personal musings as well as a series of poems that he wrote in November 1942, while he was training to fly heavy bombers over German-occupied Europe.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the regular Remembrance Day services will not be taking place, or at least, they will not be permitted large gatherings. The Jewish War Veterans of Canada, B’nai Brith, CIJA and other organizations have come together to offer an online event Wednesday Nov. 11, 2020.
You can watch it beginning at 10:50 a.m. Toronto time on the B’nai Brith website. Check here for the link.
It has been eighty years since the Vancouver Daily Province published a front page photo of this five-year-old boy breaking away from his mother’s grasp to run after his soldier father.
Canadian rabbis overseas in 1945 send men Jewish New Year greetings
Some think the young Jewish officer should have won the Victoria Cross Seventy-seven years ago this week, a McGill University…
Although the global pandemic cancelled the usual Canada Day fireworks and celebrations this July 1, some of the military personnel…
There’s an important new book out by the Canadian Jewish News. It’s called Northern Lights: A Canadian Jewish History. It tells the history of Canada’s Jewish community through the archives and photos of the country’s award-winning Jewish weekly newspaper.
Medal for George Nashen, 97, a Canadian Jewish WWII RCAF veteran Lieut.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire, one of Canada’s most famous soldiers…
Canadian WWII veteran Max Dankner spent many nights riding his Norton army motorcycle to carry out reconnaissance through German-occupied Europe. The Montreal-born soldier served in the Italian campaign with the 4th Princess Louise Dragoon Guards, and then in Holland delivering vital messages as a dispatch motorcycle rider.
That is why motorcycles played a starring role in an unforgettable surprise which Dankner’s family arranged for his 95th birthday on May 30.
About a dozen Peel Regional Police vehicles, including two motorcycles from the Road Safety unit, and some Peel Regional Paramedic Services trucks assembled Saturday outside the Mississauga home of Dankner’s son. On the driveway, Max and his wife Natalie, had prime seats for the parade.
You don’t have to be a licensed private investigator to find the military records of your ancestors. If you’ve always wanted to learn more about their service during the Second World War, or the First, it’s never been easier to find their official government service records, at least if your relative served in a Canadian military uniform.