Montreal Jewry today began to voice its indignation over the open anti-Semitic attitude taken by its Mayor, Camillien Houde, who stated during a political speech in the city of Quebec that Jews should leave Montreal and go to Palestine.
“Such words uttered by the first magistrate of a city with over a million population must not be tolerated,” declared Alderman Joseph Schubert. “If such a statement were made by the Mayor of New York, Chicago or any other North American city steps would immediately be taken to have him impeached. I call upon the responsible Jewish leaders of Montreal to voice their protest.”
Max Seigler, another Jewish alderman who was previously a Houde supporter, declared that if the Mayor’s statement as reported in the press is true, then the Mayor does not deserve to be the leader of the Conservative Party.
Under the heading “Demasked,” the Canader Adler, local Yiddish daily, declares in an editorial that the mayor has steadily been veering towards the anti-Semites. It cites the mayor’s actions until now in opposing the Jewish School Bill and finds that his anti-Semitic outburst in Quebec City a couple of days ago was only the logical result of the anti-Jewish stand which he had decided to take in connection with the school bill. As leader of the Conservative Opposition in the Province of Quebec, says the editorial, Mayor Houde has stooped to demagoguery and hasn’t even shied at anti-Semitism in order to “prove” that the Liberal Premier Tascherau had “betrayed” the French-Canadian population of the province and had “sold out” to the Jews, by giving the latter the right to have their own schools.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
