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THE CANADIAN JEWISH REVIEW
JULY 29. mi
The Case For Legislation Against Hate Propaganda, Genocide, And
To Genocide
SECULAR SCHOOLS IN THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC
By W. E. Greening, in the Jewish Frontier
By Sobino Citron, Secretary of the Association Of Survivors Of Nazi Oppression, P.O. Box 98, Don Mills, Ontario
One need not doubt the sincere effort by uoinniunity loaders, government officials, and other interested individuals to see that somehow the whole meaning for the need of such legislation is dwindling incaninglcssly.
Could experts be wrong? My humble answer would be: It depends what the experts are expert on, and to what degree they understand the problem.
What then is the answer? The answer could be far simpler, if we looked at it in the proper context; but for that one must go back, lx)th in time and locale.
At the cud of the Second World War there was no confusion as to what Nazism, represented. Just to refresh our memories, Nazism was declared a criminal doctrine by the World Tribunal .in The Hague, guilty of unprecedented crimes against humanity. (I will not go into details, anyone interested, if he is not familiar with these facts, caii easily obtain such information).
Trials of Nazi war criminals arc still in progress; thousands of war criminals are at large either under assumed names or for lack of witnesses (how can the dead testify?). Also, not al] survivors of Nazism ever knew the names of their individual oppressors. The real crime perpetrator was Nazism for it represented legalized crime by the state.
As far as the survivors of Nazism ore-concerned,'to this date it is not the individuals name that matters, but what he represents. Any man who calls himself a Nazi, or propagates Nazi doctrine, is in fact a self-proclaimed criminal.
It should matter little whether the danger at this time is real or even present. What really matters is: Do we agree with the Nazi doctrine or don't we? This is the simplest way I con put it. Arc wc questioning the wisdom of the decisions taken by most of the countries of the world following the holocaust, or arc we so far removed both in time and place that wc cannot understand the moral obligation of this generation, and the legacy wc must leave for all times?
I know many Germans who reproach themselves now for inaction in the early 1950s. Worse yet, wc reproach them, and yet, wc tolerate Nazism here in Canada! J low-can one explain this strange contradiction?
A whole new generation has reached maturity since the end of the Second World War. A'bold and free generation of young men and women, who have had all the advantages of new and modern technology in this wonderful country of ours. This new generation will soon become the leaders and the conscience of our society. Freedom is important to them, so indeed it is to all, (and, I might add, particularly to those who have experienced the lack of it). But they are vulnerable, they have not known real hardship, they have not known oppression, and wc can only hoj)C they will know how to guard against them.
And this brings us to the most ticklish problem of all, freedom of speech.
What does it really mean? I believe most people who base not known oppression take their freedom for granted. It is something tht> have had as long as they can remember, without ever ha\ing to worry about it; or let's face it, even to take advantage of it. It becomes a sort of stationary fixture, a part of the whole, an indispensable part, only when there should be a threat of losing it! But how could we lose our freedom?
Some of us are so frightened to change the status quo that we become parabzed into inaction. Wc would become incapable of dealing with the needs of the da\, forgetting that laws written a hundred years ago could not possibly
provide for situations then unforeseen!
Freedom of' speech never implied the right to libel and incite one group against another. Canada, being an "ethnic" country, can afford it least of all. Freedom of speech, therefore, must be used with restraint and responsibility. Anyone who makes a damaging public statement about an individual realizes that he must have proof to substantiate his claim or lie is made responsible in an 'appropriate way.
But a group has no recourse at all, according to our present laws,
Following the end of the Second World War, the United Nations has dealt with a number of ways and means to safeguard against incitement to genocide. Canada, along with other nations, was one of the signatories to various documents including the United Nations . Convention of Genocide.
Among these nations are such democracies as Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Holland, West Germany, Austria, Italy, and India. The mother of Parliaments, Great Britain, on whose constitution most of our laws are based, adopted such a law last year.
The Klein-Walker Bill, introduced in February, 1964, introduced legislation based on the U.N. Convention and group libel law. Other bills followed, resulting only in unnecessary delays. The most recent report .by a special committee would seem to want to have the cake and cat it too. In fact, everything it proposes it takes back in the very next breath.
Surely, wc must have enough legal brains in Canada which could bring forth legislation that would give a meaningful protection against group libel without hurting freedom of expression. Perhaps anvonc assigned to deal with this problem should be required to visit some of the concentration camps which stand today as museums to commemorate for all time man's inhumanity to man.
But how much can empty walls really tell? Yes, and there arc still the ovens ... It would also help if they could study the thousands of documents dealing with the Nazi war criminals.
I cannot believe that they would have 3ny doubts after that as to where the line should be drawn on freedom of speech..' Personally, I believe that the line must be drawn � where one individual or group (no matter) trespasses on the Tights of another individual or group. The same already holds true for all other laws governing our society.
And if the survivors of Nazism seem a little impatient, please remember we have been to hell and back. Wc are the living witnesses of a destruction unprecedented in recorded history. A methodical destruction by intelligent beings, whose only reason for this was their fanatical belief in their own superiority and their right to inherit the world, even if it were to go up in smoke first.
Wc who survived this hell on earth have a responsibility, an obligation to fulfil. Wc wish to leave this legacy to mankind; we must engrave it in the human consciousness for all time, so that no mother would ever have to witness her own child torn from her breast to be smashed brutally against a wall till it was dead.
I will not give any more details, there arc too many, and too many faint hearts who could not bear it. Wc cannot speak therefore, but neither can be remain silent, not in the face of Nazism revived!
Wc will not live forever; we ho|>e to finish our job before wc depart, <o that our memories will not be haunted by those who perished in vain. Nor should we have to haunt those who might have failed to understand or to act now.
The Canadian Province of Quebec h;is a system of public education unique in North America. Its present I Or in is largely due to the historical development of this region of Canada. As is well known, a large proportion of the total population of tin's province is French-speaking and Roman Catholic in origin. The non-French elements in the population, including the Jews, arc mostly concentrated in the City of Montreal, which is the largest metropolis in Canada.
Fvcr since Confederation in 1867, the educational system of the province has been organized according to religious faith. Indeed, there arc in effect three systems of public education in Quebec today, i.e., for the English speaking Protestant population; a second for the French-speaking Catholic population; and a tbird for the English-speaking Catholic population. Until recently, these systems have been under the direction of a board composed of both Roman Catholic- and .Prptcstant clergy and laymen.
The control of the Roni3n Catholic Church over the French-speaking population of the province in the past has been absolute, and the influence of the great Catholic orders in this field, such as the Jesuits and the Dominicans, has l>ccu great. The rectors of both the large French Catholic universities.in-the province, Laval, in Quebec City, and the University of Montreal, have been churchmen.
The difference in spirit between the French Catholic and the English Protestant systems in the past has been profound. The French system was impregnated with. the spirit of Catholicism in Europe in the age of the Counter Reformation and of Louis the Fourteenth in France � the era when Canada was first colonized by the French.
There has been strong stress in the colleges and the universities on the study of theology and of the Greek and Roman classics. Although in the English-speaking Protestant schools there has been some religious instruction, the broad outlines of the system resemble the public educational systems in the Province of. Ontario and in the neighboring American states.
This worked fairly well during the 19th century when the French-speaking population was still concentrated in the rural regions of the province and when the political, intellectual, and social power of the Roman Catholic Church was still very strong.
But during the past few decades, there, have been important social and economic changes in this region of Canada. There has been a large scale immigration to Montreal from many regions of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, and it has been impossible to fit many of these immigrant groups into the existing religious system of education in the province. One of the largest and most important of these groups has been the Jews.
Montreal today has the largest Jewish community in Canada and it has long bceu a leading center of Jewish cultural influence in North America. Jewish immigration to Canada began during the period of the Cza-rist persecution of Jews in the former Russian Empire in the first decade of the present century and greatly in-
creased after the rise of Fascism in Central Europe in the 1930's.
These newcomers to Canada have tended to try to integrate themselves into the English-speaking community in Quebec rather than the French-speaking one, chiefly for economic reasons, since the great majority of the large industries and business firms in the province arc controlled by English-speaking groups.
But from the very start the Jewish immigrants found the educational systems in Montreal and throughout the province unsatisfactory because of their religious diameter. Under the educational arrangements which were made when the province came into existence in 1867, the Protestant primary and secondary schools were under no legal obligation to admit Jewish pupils to their classes or to hire Jewish teachers.
About the year 1902, the Protestant schools in Montreal began to admit Jewish pupils in an informal manner but their exact legal educational status remained uncertain. This situation was naturally unsatisfactory to the Jewish population of the city which was constantly increasing in number and influence during this period.
Towards the cud of the 1920's it conducted a long legal fight over this question in the Quebec courts and the case eventually went to the Privy Council in London, the highest Canadian legal tribunal at that time. The decision of this tribunal was not completely satisfactory to the Jewish population of Quebec since it did not make it legally binding on the Prot^ estant School Commissions of the province to admit Jewish students to their schools.
However, through a bill passed by the Quebec legislature in 1930, a Jewish group was set up which negotiated with the City of Montreal and with the City of Outremont, an adjacent municipality which had a large Jewish population, for the admission of Jewish pupils to the local Protestant primary and secondary schools. But the Jewish position in this matter still remained unsatisfactory. It is only since 1964 that the Jewish population gained the right to elect members of its own religion to the Protestant School Commission in that city.
During the past half-century various Jewish groups ih Montreal have started Jewish primary and secondary private schools in some of which a strong emphasis has been placed on the teaching of Hebrew and Jewish history and literature. But today only a minority of the Jewish children in the city attend these schools because their fees are too high for the majority of the local Jewish population.
Immigrants to Montreal of Jewish origin from French-speaking regions such as France, Belgium, and North Africa have been placed in a particularly difficult dilemma by this situation. They are of course, barred from sending their children to the French Catholic schools and, if they send them to the English Protestant ones,' the children are in danger of losing knowledge of their native tongue and culture.
Another group in Montreal, although a small one, which has never fitted into this educational svstcm, are
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Religion In Public Schools
The Timmins Press commented editorially on "Religion In Schools": "Religion, like sex education, should be taken out of public schools, elementary and secondary at least . . . Most of the difficulty with religion in schools is that religion is 80<v inherited, 10'; conversion, and 10'i individual choice. Most young people believe as they arc told, by parents or clergy, to believe . . . Religion should be left to the family and the church, since the family and the church arc already the dominant faction. They may be ignoring some of their responsibility by allowing schools to take over this aspect of education . . . Separate and parochial schools will continue to function around a religious nucleus, hut in public schools, religion should be recognized as a matter of individual freedom . . ."
The Kingston Whig-Standard,
in an editorial entitled "Religion And Education", pointed out: ". . . The fact is that all the talk of religious 'education' in our schools is just a blind for what really goes on: religious observance. There is no rational argument which can be put up against the charge that it is arrogant and authoritarian to force public schools to act as extensions of the Christian churches. But rationality docs not enter into this controversy . . ." The editorial quoted the representative of the Ontario Government to the effect that "religious instruction outside of Ju-daco-Christian principles 'would not be compatible with the political, historical, and religious fibre of our society*. That can be taken as an expression of the considered opinion of the Government of Ontario and will serve to suggest to those who are anxious to have this situation changed just how much chance they have of success".
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I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it. � Voltaire to Helvetius.
JULY 29, 1966
Publication Offlc�
VOL. XLVIII, No. 44
Ctrdenrale, Quebec
the French-speaking Protestants. It is only within the last decade that the Protestant School Commission in Montreal has made any effort to provide for their educational needs by establishing a few schools for them.
Indeed, during recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that this religious school system is outmoded.
The terms "Catholic" and "Protestant" have become almost meaningless in this connection. On the English-speaking side in Quebec, the Protestants arc no longer a majority while on the French-speaking � side there arc undoubtedly many agnostics, Protestants, jews and other elements.
However, during the past two decades, there have been great changes in the French-speaking community in Quebec. French Canada has experienced a far-reaching industrial revolution and many new secular influences have come into the province from France and the United States.
The control of the Roman Catholic Church over the educational and intellectual life of the province has greatly diminished. Local French Roman Catholic leaders, such as Cardinal Leger, of Montreal, have come to realize that it is no longer possible in this new industrial and urban milieu for the Church to enjoy the monopoly which it has held so long in the French-speaking community.
As a result of these new influences, the Lesage Administration in the Province of Quebec has been effecting some far-reaching reforms in the French-speaking Catholic system of education in an effort to adapt it to the needs and conditions of the mid-twentieth century. In the future there will be a much greater emphasis on the study of the social and natural sciences, and the number of lay teachers in the French Catholic schools and colleges of the province is steadily increasing.
In other words, the French Catholic educational system in its spirit and working is steadily becoming more like the English-speaking ones.
As a result of these changes in the intellectual climate of the province � for the first time in the history of Quebec � a movement has arisen among sonic French Canadian intellectuals and educators in Montreal for the creation of a new system of secular schools in that province for the French-speaking population which will be without any affiliation with any organized religious body.
This group is not anti-clerical. It does not want to abolish the present confessional educational system in the province but r3ther to supplement it by the creation of schools for French - speaking persons, either agnostic, Jewish or Protestant, who, for various reasons, do not want to scud their children to the existing schools.
At the present time, this group is trving to get official recognition from the Quebec Government and financial aid in connection with the establishment of schools. The establishment of such a system of schools in Quebec would, of course, solve the educational problems of certain groups in the province, such as the French agnostics, French Protestants, and French Jews.
At the same time, an English speaking group of scholars and educators in Montreal has launched a parallel movement somewhat more ambitious than the French one. It aims at nothing less than abandoning the present religious educational s>stem in the province and its replacement by lay schools of the t>pe which form part of the public educational svstem in the United States.
Sonic of the details of its projects are still vague. However, it apparently
is willing to link up with the spirit of French Canadian nationalism which it strong in the province. It envisages two lay educational systems in the province, one for English-speaking pupils and the other for French-speaking ones, with a certain number of bilingual schools in which both English and French will be used for instruction.
The attitude of the Jewish community in the province of Quebec towards these proposals is mixed because of divisions within the complex Jewish community of Montreal. In the past, several different proposals have been put forward by Jewish groups. It has been suggested that Jewish religious instruction also be given in the existing Protestant schools.
One group of Montreal Jews, mostly with Orthodox leanings, favors the creation in the province of Quebec of a system of Jewish parochial schools to receive financial aid from the Quebec Government and which would place a strong stress on the teaching of Hebrew arid of Jewish history and culture. In view of the present political situation in the province of Quebec, such proposals are unrealistic and impractical.
On the other hand, although it is unsafe to generalize about this subject, there are probably many Montreal Jews who would welcome the creation of an English-speaking system of completely secular schools in the province.
But, today, there is little likelihood that the Government of Quebec would give unofficial recognition or financial aid to any English-speaking or French-speaking system of secular schools. Although the French Catholic educational system is becoming steadily more secular in spirit and working, the Lesage administration was still unwilling to break the formal ties which link that system with the Roman Catholic Church.
The chief value of the organizations at present working for lay schools in the province of Quebec would seem to be educational. They are familiar-
(Coutinued on Page Seven)
FIERY CROSS BURNED AFTER JEWS ENTERTAIN^ NEGROES
At Oakdalc, Long Island, N.Y., a makeshift cross was discovered burning on the front lawn of a private home that had been the setting for a racially integrated holiday party. According to the Suffolk County police, the cross was found at 9:45 p.m. in front of the home of Mr. and Mrs. Alan Roscnzweig, at 281 Oakwood Avenue. The Rosenzweigs, who arc white, had been hosts at an outdoor barbecue and party for a half-dozen Negro friends and their families.
The cross was about four feet high, constructed from 2-by-4 planks, and wrapped in burlap, which the police said had apparently been soaked in an inflammable liquid, savs the New York Times. It was set against a tree and was first noticed by Mrs. Roscnzweig who called the police.
The neighborhood, situated south of Sunrise Highway near the South Shore of Long Island, was described as a middle-income development of white residents.
Detectives of the Third Precinct said they had no immediate suspects. "It was an ugly incident," one detective said. "Wc don't know for sure yet whether it was directly related to the party."