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Bialystok begins by examining the years immediately following World War II, showing that Canadian Jews were not psychologically equipped to comprehend the enormity of the Holocaust. Unable to grasp the extent of the atrocities that had occurred in a world that was not theirs, Canadian Jews were not prepared to empathize with the survivors and a chasm between the groups developed and widened in the next two decades. He shows how the efflorescence of marginal but vicious antisemitism in Canada in the 1960s, in combination with more potent antisemitic outrages internationally and the threat to Israel's existence, led to an interest in the Holocaust. He demonstrates that with the politicization ...
Holocaust Denial. The Politics of Perfidy provides a graphic and compelling global panorama of past and present variations on this toxic phenomenon. The volume examines right and left wing French negationism, post-Communist Holocaust deniers in Eastern-Europe, the spread of denial to Australia, Canada, South-Africa and even to Japan. Leading scholarly experts also explore the close connection between Holocaust denial, global conspiracy theories, antisemitism and radical anti-Zionism– especially in Iran and the Arab world.
How have Jews experienced their environments and how have they engaged with specific places? How do Jewish spaces emerge, how are they contested, performed and used? With these questions in mind, this anthology focuses on the production of Jewish space and lived Jewish spaces and sheds light on their diversity, inter-connectedness and multi-dimensionality. By exploring historical and contemporary case studies from around the world, the essays collected here shift the temporal focus generally applied to Jewish civilization to a spatially oriented perspective. The reader encounters sites such as the gardens cultivated in the Ghettos during World War II, the Israeli development town of Netivot,...
Report of a national survey following the trial of neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel in Toronto in March 1985. Zundel was tried for promoting hatred against the Jews by distributing the pamphlet "Did Six Million Really Die?" Before the trial, concern was expressed regarding its effects on public opinion - the dangers of providing a public platform for hatemongers and the consequences of a possible acquittal. The trial ended in a conviction - Zundel was sentenced to fifteen months in jail. [The conviction was later overturned on appeal - ed.] The survey examined the impact of the trial on feelings towards Jews, Germans, and the Holocaust, the role of the media, and previously-held prejudices of the respondents. The results show that the trial did not engender support for Zundel's views, particularly because the people most susceptible to his views were not regular consumers of media news and were not even aware of the trial. Media reports increased awareness of the Holocaust and aroused sympathy for Jews, but also persuaded Canadians that Zundel's ideas have a following. Pp. 167-177 contain the design of the survey sample (1,054 subjects) and the questionnaire.
‘God is a racist’—so goes a statement published in the literature of the Western Guard, a white-supremacist, anti-semitic group in Toronto. It is one of a number of racist organizations that have sprung up in Canada since the Second World War. Stanley Barrett points out in this disquieting study that although many of the principles of such organizations are offensive to the vast majority of Canadians, they represent a growing part of a broader political phenomenon that has recently surfaced in numerous nations. In examining the rise of right wing extremism in Canada, a nation with a traditional reputation for tolerance, Barrett considers a wide range of political convictions, from confessed fascists to essentially ordinary, law-abiding, but highly conservative individuals who are deeply concerned about the future of Western Christian civilization. Barrett’s study, grounded in a scientific tradition that has regularly exposed racial myths, is guided by humanist values that celebrate individual worth. It sheds new light on a growing phenomenon that threatens those values.
Ethnic tensions had been rising in Toronto throughout the hot summer of 1933. Hitler had recently come to power in Germany and some residents of the eastern beaches neighbourhood had formed "Swastika Clubs" to protect their community from "undesirable elements." On August 16, at Toronto’s Christie Pits, a baseball game between two local teams - one made up of Jewish players - ignited the simmering resentments. Some troublemakers unfurled a huge swastika flag, shouting, "Heil Hitler!" Retaliation from Jewish spectators and players was swift and reinforcements for both sides poured into the park. The result - never experienced in Toronto before or since - was a four-hour race riot. The riot at Christie Pits remains a disturbing, even legendary part of the city's history. Authors Cyril Levitt and William Shaffir, carefully sifting fact from fiction, provide a compelling perspective on how ordinary Canadians reacted to the intensifying antisemitism in Europe.
Since 9/11 and the onset of the "war on terror," the principal challenge confronting liberal democracies has been to balance freedom with security and individual with collective rights. This book sheds new light on the evolution of human rights norms in liberal democracies by charting the activism of four Canadian NGOs on issues of refugee rights, hate speech, and the death penalty, including their use of difficult, often controversial legal cases as platforms to assert human rights principles and shape judicial policy-making. The struggles of these NGOs reveal not only the fragility but also the resilience of ideas about rights in liberal democracies.