Studies in Immigration and Culture - 14: Holocaust Survivors in Canada

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The reception of 35,000 Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution and their dependents in the decade following the Second World War represents a watershed moment in Canadian Jewish history. The unprecedented scale of the relief effort, compounded by the unique social, psychological, and emotional needs of the survivors challenged the established Jewish community and resettlement agents alike. Adara Goldberg’s Holocaust Survivors in Canada: Exclusion, Inclusion, Transformation, 1947–1955 highlights the immigration, resettlement, and integration experience from the perspective of Holocaust survivors and those charged with assisting them. The book explores the relationships between the survivors, Jewish social service organizations, and local Jewish communities. It considers how those relationships—strained by disparities in experience, language, culture, and worldview—both facilitated and impeded the ability of survivors to adapt to a new country. Researched in basement archives and as well as across Holocaust survivors’ kitchen tables, Holocaust Survivors in Canada represents the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the resettlement, integration, and acculturation experience of survivors in early postwar Canada. Goldberg reveals the challenges in responding to, and recovering from, genocide not through the lens of lawmakers, but from the perspective of “new Canadians” themselves.