It’s Hanukkah 1944.
There’s a war. Your family is torn apart.
You don’t know where they are. Will you see them again?
But for a moment, there's a light.
It's December.
You're a Jewish child hiding from the Nazis with a Christian family.
You haven't seen your mother and father for months, maybe years.
A year earlier, Jews huddled around this menorah in Westerbork transit camp.
From July 1942 to September 1944, the Nazis deported some 100,000 Jews from Westerbork. Anne Frank was among them.
They were your mothers and fathers.
Your brothers and sisters.
Gone.
You’re in hiding with a Christian family.
But you remember your family.
You remember Hanukkah.
Will you see another one?
A few days after the liberation of Tilburg, Rabbi Captain Samuel Cass asks Jewish Canadian soldiers for contributions.
“I am proud to say that our men contributed thousands of chocolate bars, bags of candy and other delicacies as Chanukah gifts to children."
There’s a light in the darkness. It’s there.
Sometimes you just need someone to pull you through.
Corporal Mimi Freedman was ready for some light.
By 1944, she’d been at war for five years.
Regularly near the frontlines, she helped interrogate Nazis.
Normandy. Mentioned in dispatches.
She was ready for some light.
Rabbi Cass saw the destruction everywhere, particularly in the synagogues.
“All that was left were the four bare walls and a leaking roof, the evidences of a wild orgy of vandalism were all around us.”
“The stories of these people will never really be adequately told.”
But you’re just a kid. This, this horror, is all you know.
Then Mimi and Samuel come to visit.
They bring you gifts.
They bring you light.
They bring Hanukkah.
“We have returned to light the Hanukkah candles.”
Canadian soldier Phillip Madras was there. He met a nurse who was hiding seven Jewish children from the Nazis.
One was a four-year-old boy who couldn’t remember his name or his hometown.
She called him Joseph.
Private Eve Keller realized the importance of the celebrations when she saw a captured Nazi soldier watching the festivities.
“He didn’t believe them when they said they were Jewish because he claimed Hitler said he got rid of all the Jews.”
It’s Hanukkah in Holland in 1944.
Jewish soldiers, Americans, Brits, Canadians, bring you smiles. Rabbi Samuel Cass brings light.
But your family is torn apart, your mothers and fathers, your brothers and sisters.
You won’t see them again.
Rabbi Captain Samuel Cass brought light to children hiding in the dark.
He helped them through.
He put hope on wheels.
He went on to lead one of the first services many Jews attended in Germany since the beginning of the war.
For some, it was their last.
We still see your light, Samuel.
Rabbi Samuel Cass
Mimi Freedman
Eve Keller
Phillip Madras
They were amongst more than 17,000 Canadian Jews who stared down antisemitism, fought fascism, and risked everything to return the light.
Their stories are our stories.
They are Us.
Know their stories.
Know their fight.
See their light.
Learn more in @ebessner's Double Threat: Canadian Jews, the Military, and World War II.
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