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Delayed Impact
The Holocaust and the Canadian Jewish Community
Franklin
Bialystok
In Delayed Impact Franklin
Bialystok explores the evolution of the legacy of the
Holocaust in the collective memory of the post-war Canadian
Jewish community. He seeks to understand why the Holocaust's
effect was relatively muted up to 1960, moved to the
forefront with the rise of anti-Semitism in the 1960s,
and became a prominent concern and marker for Jewish
ethnic identity after 1973.
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 anti-Semitism
in Canada in the 1960s, in combination with more potent
anti-Semitic outrages internationally and the threat
to Israel's existence, led to an interest in the Holocaust.
He demonstrates that with the politicization of the
survivors and the maturation of the post-war generation
of Canadian Jews in the 1980s, the memory of the Holocaust
became a pillar of ethnic identity.
Combining previously unexamined documents and interviews
with leaders in the Jewish community in Canada, Bialystok
shows how the collective memory of an epoch-making event
changed in reaction to historical circumstances. His
work enhances our understanding of immigrant adaptation
and ethnic identification in a multi-cultural society
in the context of the post-war economic and social changes
in the Canadian landscape and sheds new light on the
history of Canadian Jewry, opening a new perspective
on the effects of the Holocaust on a community in transition.
"Bialystok makes an enormously important contribution
to Canadian Jewish history and to the broader field
of ethnic studies. He has brought a new approach to
bear and has explored sources hitherto untapped in the
archives of the Canadian Jewish Congress and the National
Archives of Canada. Academic historians and students
of ethnic experience will find this book not just interesting
but compelling."
Gerald Tulchinsky, Department of History, Queen's University
"A groundbreaking work that greatly advances our
knowledge and understanding of the post-war history
of the Canadian Jewish community. It sheds new light
on the uneasy relationship between post-war Holocaust
survivors and the rest of the Canadian Jewish community,
and documents the tensions between the two groups, manifested
in the debates over how to react to anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism,
and the memory of the Holocaust. This is a valuable
work and a serious contribution to researchers in its
field."
Henry Srebrnik, Department of Political Science, University
of Prince Edward Island
"There is at present no scholarly or even popular
work which carefully examines the question of Jewish
responses in Canada to the Holocaust. Bialystok is breaking
new ground."
Phyllis Senese. Department of History, University of
Victoria
"Delayed Impact is well researched and deals with
an important subject in Canadian Jewish history. Bialystok
is at his best in showing the strains between the survivors'
organizations and the community elites."
Stephen Scheinberg, Department of History, Concordia
University
Franklin Bialystok is a part-time lecturer in the Department
of History at the University of Toronto and the University
of Waterloo. He has published numerous articles on the
Holocaust in various journals and edited collections.
Winner of the 2001
Canadian History Award (Jewish Book Award Committee)
Subject categories:
CANADIAN
HISTORY
JEWISH
STUDIES
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Published August 2000 328 pp 6 x 9
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Cloth ISBN 0-7735-2065-1 $39.95
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