Volume 4 No 2 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

748 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:747Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, Bergen uses the personal testimoniesof German Jews (housed at the United States Holocaust MemorialMuseum) to illustrate the complex realities facing these refugees as theystruggled to survive in Nazi Germany and as they fled the regime, a few ofthem for Canada.The debate over Canadian participation in the Olympic Games of1936, hosted by Nazi Germany, is the subject tackled by Richard Menkisand Harold Troper. Despite a boycott campaign led by the Canadian JewishCongress, and a public debate in the national newspapers, the CanadianOlympic Committee (COC) decided to follow the British decision to acceptGermany’s invitation to the Games and passed the motion unanimously.The question investigated by Menkis and Troper is to what degree theCanadian public, and the COC, was aware of Nazi Germany’s racist andantisemitic policies at the time. Their examination of the Canadian pressfrom 1933 to 1935 demonstrates substantial coverage of the new leadershipin Germany; the editorial views of that leadership, however, ranged widelybetween condemnation and optimistic respect. The press reported on theNuremberg Laws of 1935 and the resulting discrimination against Germany’sJews, as well as the antisemitic speeches given by Nazi leaders. Thesomber conclusion drawn by this chapter is that Nazi antisemitism was notconsidered by the COC to be an issue of significance in their decision toparticipate in the Games of 1936. Of higher regard was the desire to followGreat Britain and to support Canadian athletes and their nationalist hungerfor medals, as well as diplomatic and economic considerations.Amanda Grzyb’s analysis of the mainstream Canadian press from1938 to 1939 is one of the most important contributions to this volume.What exactly did the average Canadian know about the Nazi assault on theJewish people across the Atlantic? Research into American press coverageof the Nazi period, particularly that of the Jewish-owned New York Times,stresses the lack of detail given to the Jewish identity of refugees and to theantisemitism of the Nazis. Not so in Canada: readers may be shocked todiscover the wide and detailed coverage of the plight of Jews in Germanyprovided by the Canadian press. Focusing on increased coverage duringthree major events (Kristallnacht, the MS St. Louis, and antisemitic agitationin Quebec), Grzyb analyzes the content of articles, editorials, and letterspublished in The Globe and Mail and six other English dailies. Not onlywas Nazi antisemitism a subject of discussion in these papers, but the genocidalintent of the Nazi regime was also made clear in articles and editorialsthat quoted Hitlerian rhetoric (extermination, extinction, and liquidation)accurately. Nazism was clearly depicted as both a barbarous threat to civilizationand a specific threat to Jews. Editors criticized the failure of primeminister Mackenzie King to publicly condemn Kristallnacht, as Roosevelt