Testimonials

Bessner’s writing brings this part of our history out of the shadows. All of us owe it to those remarkable men and women to read their stories.

 In Ellin Bessner, these Canadian-Jewish servicemen and women have found a documentarian who understood their faith  and has dug deep, listened long and fought hard to tell their stories

“Double Threat” fully vindicates against any naysayers who doubt or would impugn the accomplishments of that Great Generation of Canadian Jews.

Double Threat by Ellin Bessner, leaves no stones unturned in its telling of the full-blooded saga of the heroic participation of Jewish men and women in the Canadian military during the Second World War

Thoroughly researched, the book is replete with anecdotes Bessner picked up from the more than 300 interviews she conducted. We learn about the experiences of Jewish war prisoners, about those who helped liberate the concentration camps and how they dealt with the horror of what they saw, about life in the barracks, and even about Jewish soldiers’ off-duty adventures. Most compelling were the many stories of soldiers being beseeched by desperate relatives in Canada to search for survivors in the camps liberated by the Allies. But perhaps most illuminating, especially to historians, is Bessner’s exploration of the comportment of Jewish women soldiers, of wives at home, and of bereaved widows. The blending of gender and Judaism is one of the unique features of this book.