Ellin brings the story of Canada’s Jewish WWII fighters to Peterborough for Remembrance Day 2019

As the world prepares to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz,  Canadian author and journalist Ellin Bessner says it is important to remember the victims, but also the liberators: the Canadian soldiers, airmen and sailors who volunteered to put on a uniform, and go overseas to fight to defeat Hitler, and rescue the Jews of Europe from the Holocaust. About 17,000 Canadians of Jewish faith were among those who helped their comrades win WWII, as Bessner writes in her new book “Double Threat”, yet these brave Jewish Canadian fighters also had to overcome widespread antisemitism both at home and on the battlefield, plus grave personal danger, should they fall into enemy hands and their Jewish religion be discovered.  Ellin will be the keynote speaker at the Jewish Community Centre of Peterborough on Tuesday evening Nov. 12, 2019 for the community’s 2019 Remembrance Day commemoration. Books will be available for signing and sale.

Among those local families who served were sons of the city’s Rogow family:  Sgt. Instructor Sam Rogow in the RCAF was killed in a plane crash in 1942 while training other airmen in Quebec. His name is on the Peterborough Citizens War memorial in Confederation Park. A brother Pvt. Ralph Rogow served in Holland and Germany with the Canadian Army, while another brother Alex served with U.S. forces.