Ellin Bessner will take you on a fascinating journey to meet the Canadian Jewish heroines, both at home and at the front, who helped Canada win WWII. Their contributions to history have never been properly recognized.
You will “meet” Bessner’s own great-aunt, Cpl. Daisy Lazare, who served in Ottawa, along with Sgt. Miriam Freedman, who went overseas with Normandy Landings in 1944, S/O Rose Goodman, who served in Claresholm, Alberta and Pt. Esther (Bubis) Thorley, serving in Vancouver, as well as the legions of Jewish women volunteers who raised funds, packed boxes, made sandwiches and even built the bombs.
Bessner is the author of “Double Threat: Canadian Jews, the Military and WWIl” (2019, University of Toronto Press) and a contributing author to “Northern Lights: A Canadian Jewish History” (2020, Lola Stein Institute).
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As the world marks the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in WWII, author and journalist Ellin Bessner visits the Air Crew Association of Ontario meeting in Toronto, via ZOOM, to share a little known story about how the Allies won the air war.Among the Canadians who volunteered, were 6,000 Jewish personnel who served in the RCAF and RAF. They served at great personal risk, should they be captured, and their faith be discovered by the Nazis. Yet they volunteered, for King and Country, and to save their own people from Hitler’s Final Solution. They served despite facing widespread antisemitism at home, from the government of Mackenzie King, and in the very military they signed up to serve.
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The nearly 280 Canadian Jewish women who volunteered, put on a uniform, and served in WWII lived their own important wartime experiences, and contributed to help Canada and the Allies win the war, defeat Hitler, and stop the Holocaust. Most of the women also had their own #Time’sUp moments.
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