As the world commemorates the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two, author and journalist Ellin Bessner brings her new book “Double Threat” to the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton. As Hamilton and indeed, the world marked the end of the fighting, hundreds of Canadian airmen and soldiers were still hard at work overseas with a new humanitarian mission: rescuing the survivors of the Holocaust, including in Germany at the site of the notorious Nazi death camp Bergen-Belsen.
Harry Kaushansky of Montreal served in the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals. He grew up in a home where his mother served only kosher food.
Manny Rubinoff of Toronto served as a sapper after he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army in the Second World War. When he refused to attend Catholic or Protestant church services on his army base in Ontario, he was”paraded” or brought up in front of the colonel to be disciplined. Instead, Rubinoff unbuttoned his uniform, showed the officer the Jewish daily prayer garment known as “Arba Kanfot” that he wore under his clothes, and pulled out his pocket-sized prayer book, handed it to the colonel, and waited. He tells “Double Threat” author and journalist Ellin Bessner what happened next.