An official of the B’nai B’rith of Canada has accused two former Prime Ministers of Canada of having been anti-Semites and a third former Prime Minister of possibly having been one. All three men are deceased.
According to David Matas, chairman of the League for Human Rights of the Canadian B’nai B’rith, this explains why for so many years Canada was lox in attempting to bring Nazi war criminals living in the country to justice.
Matas spoke to reporters yesterday in connection with the release of a 122-page report by his organization on Nazi war criminals in Canada. He claimed that William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister from 1935-48, and Louis St. Laurent, Prime Minister from 1948-57, were anti-Semites, and that Lester Pearson, Prime Minister from 1963-68, may have been anti-Semitic.
King died in 1950; St. Laurent, who was Secretary of State for External Affairs in 1946, died in 1973; and Pearson, who joined the St. Laurent government in 1948 as Secretary of State for External Affairs, died in 1972.
QUOTES FROM BOOK TO SUBSTANTIATE CHARGES
To substantiate his charges, Matas quoted extensively from the book, “None is Too Many, ” by living Abella and Harold Troper, which deals with Jewish requests for admission to Canada between 1933, when the Nazis took power in Germany, and 1948.
Matas claimed that King and St. Laurent were “actively supportive in encouraging the refusal to allow Jewish refugees to come into Canada during the Nazi rule” and Pearson, although not reported to have made anti-Semitic statements, “was also port of the attempt to blockade Jewish refugees. ” Abella quoted King as defending restrictions on Jewish immigration on grounds that “Jews would pollute Canada’s bloodstream. ” He said King’s diaries contained “all sorts of derogatory statements about Jews. “The writer also accused the St. Laurent government of allowing “thousands of Nazi collaborators into Canada, while some of Pearson’s policies and some of his statements while a diplomat might at one time have led one to believe that he shared some of these feelings against Jewish immigration.”
He contended that although Pearson “seemed to agree with the policy of keeping Jews in DP (displaced persons) camps while other refugees were being allowed into Canada, “he was “only a civil servant applying policies made by others” whereas King and St. Laurent applied policies they themselves helped make.
ABSOLVES RECENT PRIME MINISTERS
Matas conceded there is no “documentation” of anti-Semitism behind the Canadian government’s “inactivity” in bringing Nazi war criminals to justice. But he claimed “it would be perfectly consistent with what Mackenzie King and St. Laurent did in not allowing Jewish refugees to come to Canada to show inactivity in bringing Nazi war criminals in Canada to justice as well.”
Replying to a reporter’s question, Matas said that while Pearson was Prime Minister, anti-Semitism could have been a factor in the inaction of the Canadian govemment. He absolved more recent Prime Ministers.
According to Matas, the late John Diefenbaker, former Prime Ministers Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Joe Clarke, and the present Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, “did not manifest any anti-Semitism whatsoever.”
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