How Canada’s Jewish Women in Uniform helped defeat Hitler and win WWII: Ellin speaks to the NCJW International Branch in Toronto Nov 20, 2018

Although the Second World War was a man’s war, and 17,000 Canadian Jewish men served, a tiny but important group of 270 Canadian Jewish women dared to overcome their family and community’s disapproval, the lower pay, and sexual harassment, and joined the Canadian forces after 1941. (That is when the government allowed women to enlist). They served in many jobs at home and behind the front lines.  Women drove taught phys-ed, served up meals,  took dictation about top secret radar, and packed parachutes. Others were military police, like my Aunt Daisy Friedberg, (nee Lazare). Section Officer Rose Goodman was a high ranking Adjutant at an RCAF training base in Alberta, where fighter pilots were preparing to go overseas and into combat. Some of the women went to Normandy just 40 days after D-Day, and dodged bombs and bullets, there while doing their jobs.