[M]any Jewish Canadian volunteers would encounter official and unofficial anti-Semitism after showing up at their local recruiting offices. It sometimes took considerable perseverance just to get into uniform, with some branches of the military presenting more barriers than others.
Sadly, the experiences of young Monte Halparin of Winnipeg (who would go on to fame as a game show host with the stage name Monty Hall) were not unique. When he tried to enlist in the armoured corps at the University of Manitoba campus, he was told, “I don’t think they’re taking Jews.”
The Royal Canadian Air Force initially had a policy that expressly limited enlistment to recruits who were “of pure European decent and British subjects.” These guidelines were sometimes used to reject Jewish and other racialized volunteers outright (especially those who had not obtained their naturalization documents) before those discriminatory regulations were lifted in 1942.
This was compounded by a strong British tradition and class consciousness in the air force that generally made it difficult for those of non-British origin to join or rise in the ranks. Despite these conditions, nearly 6,000 Canadian Jews served in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
The evidence suggests that the Royal Canadian Navy was the most difficult branch for Jewish volunteers to join. Fewer than 600 Canadian Jews were accepted into this branch of the military. Initially, it had restrictive recruiting policies similar to those of the air force.
This was compounded by enduring ties to Britain’s Royal Navy and outmoded attitudes towards different social classes that made entry into the officer ranks particularly challenging for Jewish Canadians who wanted to take on leadership roles. Young Jewish men, like Edwin Goodman and Ben Dunkelman of Toronto, were turned away by the navy, despite being excellent potential candidates.
Indeed Dunkelman, an alumnus of the prestigious Upper Canada College and heir to the wealthy family that owned Tip Top Tailors, was a recreational sailor with his own yacht on Georgian Bay, but even that prior experience did not overcome the discrimination of the navy recruiting office.
The Canadian Army presented the fewest official barriers to young Jewish men and women who volunteered or were called up to serve their country in uniform. That being said, even after having navigated the potential pitfalls to successfully enlist in any branch of the military, Jews often encountered anti-Semitic attitudes in some of their fellow service members. At times, insults and arguments and even physical fights ensued as hateful beliefs bubbled to the surface and some Jews defended themselves.
It must be noted, however, that Jewish Veterans remarked that despite encountering prejudice during their time in uniform, it seldom came from those with whom they directly served alongside. The stresses of the battlefield or being in a bomber thousands of metres above enemy territory had a way of bringing together even the most diverse group of men and making perceived differences melt away.
(Emphasis added.)
Although I chose to focus on the negative for this excerpt, that is only because I want to confirm that I have no intention of heroizing the Western Allies; the Jewish experience in serving the Western Allies was not entirely negative.
Even if in the end all that they really accomplished was serve the lesser evil, that does not mean that learning their experiences has to be unexciting or uninteresting. Au contraire! For example:
Being sunk by [an Axis] U-boat could also result in other hazardous outcomes. Harry Hurwitz survived the sinking of HMCS Athabaskan when the Canadian destroyer was torpedoed off the coast of France on April 29, 1944. He was taken prisoner by the [Axis], but not before he threw away his Star of David necklace and his wallet containing Jewish prayers.
He would spend the rest of the conflict in captivity as a prisoner of war but managed to conceal his religious identity from guards. He participated in a variety of resistance activities by the Allied prisoners in his camp, including surreptitiously putting dirt into the [Axis] officers’ coffee.