Holocaust Education Week public lecture at the Richmond Hill Public Library, Central Branch.
Ellin speaks at the Richmond Hill Public Library Writing the Wrong: How Canada's Jews in Uniform Fought WWll Author and…
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Jewish Canadian veterans
Ellin speaks at the Beach Hebrew Institute in Toronto Sunday Nov. 8, 2020 on the eve of Remembrance Day
Beaches Hebrew Institute 109 Kenilworth Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, CanadaAs the world commemorates the 75th anniversary of the end of WWII, and Remembrance Day under COVID-19, Toronto author and journalist Ellin Bessner speaks (by Zoom) at the Beaches Hebrew Institute about Canada's Jewish community and their contribution to winning the war. Bessner's book "Double Threat: Canadian Jews, the Military and WWII" tells the little known story of the 17,000 Canadians of Jewish faith who put on a uniform, defeated Hitler and rescued the survivors of the Holocaust. Her research uncovered many important stories about the Fascist supporters in the Beaches area of Toronto at the time, including from the various beach clubs in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as interviews with young Jewish men from the neighbourhood who would go on to enlist.
Virtual Remembrance Day speech to the Probus Club Etobicoke Thursday Nov. 19, 2020
Probus Etobicoke , CanadaAs the world commemorates the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, and Holocaust Education Week, Canadian author and journalist Ellin Bessner comes to the Probus Club Etobicoke club to say we still have work to do to fight the rise of antisemitism in our time.
Bessner is the author of “Double Threat”, published by the University of Toronto Press, about the contribution of Canada’s tiny wartime Jewish community to defeating the Nazis. When the prime minister of the day, Mackenzie King, called the Second World War a “double threat” for Canadian Jews, he meant that not only was freedom and democracy at risk but, so was the survival of the Jewish race from Hitler’s Final Solution. Canada’s wartime Jewish community sent over 17, 000 men and women to defeat Hitler and rescue survivors of the Holocaust.