Shalom magazine - The Atlantic Jewish Council

Tishre 5771 - Vol 35 No. 2
arouNd our regioN:
Watchmen for
The Nations Embrace Jewish People
by Joel Jacobson
David Demian added a different
dimension to Yom Hashoah
in Halifax, quite a change
from previous touching, heart-rending
recollections by Holocaust survivors
from near and far.
Demian, an Egyptian by birth, an Orthodox
Coptic Christian by faith, and a man
bothered by discrimination and hatred of
and by human beings, spoke passionately
about the ill-treatment of Jews trying to
flee Germany on the SS St. Louis in 1940
and their subsequent shunning by the
world and eventual return to Germany
where many met their fate.
A strong believer in God and His
contact directly with him, Demian is
director of Watchmen for the Nations; a
Christian-based group, comprising many
denominations and churches, plus business
leaders, media people, and many with the
same heart.
He told a large audience at the Maritime
Museum of the Atlantic, where there is an
extensive display of artefacts and lists of
names of passengers from the St. Louis,
how he disliked Jews early in his life
because of the wars between his native
country and Israel, but looked inward,
spoke with God and asked Him to change
his heart. It happened.
“I was living in Canada (he arrived in 1988
John Hennigar-Shuh, general manager, Maritime
Museum of the Atlantic, Jon Goldberg, AJC executive
director and guest speaker David Demian, director,
Watchmen of the Nations, meet prior to Yom
HaShoah ceremonies at the museum in Halifax.
as a medical doctor) and, a few years later,
(when living in Vancouver and wishing
to see change in people’s attitudes toward
one another,) I was invited to a conference
between Arabs and Jews in Switzerland
where I was representing Arab people. I
knew I wanted to see nations heal,” he said.
In 1997, he was visiting Miami and met
Herbert Karliner, a St. Louis survivor.
Demian told him he wanted to bring all
the survivors they could find to Canada
to apologize on behalf of all Canadians for
turning the ship away, to express their
sorrow.
Karliner told Demian it would never
happen but Demian insisted that is “what
God wants us to do.”
It DID happen. On November 5, 2000 in
Ottawa, 50 survivors were welcomed with
open arms by The Watchmen.
“If the church doesn’t take responsibility,
who will? We faced them and repented,”
said Demian. “We even had Baptist
pastor Doug Blair of Sarnia,
Ontario, in attendance, the
great nephew of Frederick
Blair, the minister of
immigration in 1940, who
convinced Prime Minister
Mackenzie King, who was in
favour of allowing the Jews
in, that it shouldn’t happen.
He coined the phrase, None
is Too Many.”
Blair appealed to the
survivors. “I’m humbled to
be here. I understand my
name is not dear to your heart
but I repent what went before. Will you
forgive me? Will you let me call you my
friends?”
At the dinner, each survivor was presented
a glass sculpture with an embracing hand
emerging from a maple leaf and holding
a Star of David with the St. Louis sailing
through the Star.
Demian told the Yom Hashoah audience
that Christians have a responsibility to
remember and to revise the past, to say
“Your God is my God, Your people are my
people, and we’re one family. This journey
is never finished. Christians and Jews can
walk together. I pray Canada will provide
refuge if hard times come again.”
The Watchmen for the nations produced
a film of the Ottawa dinner, plus other
events they’ve held in Canada and of
missions to Israel called The Embrace, a
record of a five-year journey of repentance
of Christians for Jews in Canada.
During Yom Hashoah ceremonies, six
candles were lit by community members,
each candle signifying one million
Jews lost in the Holocaust. Names and
backgrounds of survivors living in the
Halifax area were also read to express
the 2010 theme of Yom Hashoah, The
Voices of the Survivors, as chosen by the
international committee in Israel and Yad
Vashem. In addition, letters and testaments
from Jews lost in the Holocaust were read.
Ina Kohler, Halifax, lights a candle
on behalf of all Holocaust surviviors
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