Autograph letter by a Jewish refugee, a detainee at a detention camp in Canada; addressed to his parents in Palestine. Written on "Prisoner of War Mail" stationery. Canada, 1940. English.
Letter from a Jewish refugee, a citizen of Germany or Austria by the name of Erich Wallach; mailed from the "T" detention camp, Trois-Rivières, Quebec, a camp intended for refugees listed as subjects of enemy or hostile countries. In the letter, Wallach seeks to inform his parents, living in Jerusalem, regarding the "voyage of 11 days which was perfectly safe thanks to the powerful and glorious British navy" and states that the conditions in the Canadian facility are good: "The food is good and plenty … we have our kosher kitchen and our lodgings are comfortable." He also offers his father a special birthday greeting: "I wish you may have very soon the opportunity to see a great and glorious victory of the allies and the defeat of our greatest enemy Nazism."
Marked with the Canadian postmark "Base A.P.O Canada, " dated 1940, along with the inked stamp and label of the censor (the latter bearing the inscription "Opened by Censor").
At the beginning of the Second World War, thousands of Jewish refugees bearing German or Austrian citizenship, who had fled to Great Britain to escape persecution at the hands of the Nazis, were apprehended as subjects of a hostile state. Some two to three thousand of these individuals were sent to Canada as "German" prisoners of war. Some of them even spent the early part of their internment in the company of true POW's – German soldiers who had fought for the Nazis and were taken captive – as well as Canadian citizens and residents of Japanese and (non-Jewish) German extraction. Over time, the Jewish detainees came to be known as "accidental Immigrants."
After a brief period of indecision, the British government conceded the absurdity of treating persecuted Jews as "subjects of hostile states"; nonetheless, in Canada, some of the refugees spent as long as three years or more in the detention camps. According to various sources, this was the result of an anti-Semitic bias on the part of a number of Canadian government officials. Once released, some refugees were returned to Great Britain, while others remained in Canada and were allowed to take up residence there.
[1] f., folded into envelope, 31X15.5 cm. Good condition. Fold lines. Minor tears and creases to lengths of fold lines. Tear to center of sheet (resulting from opening of envelope), with minor damage to text.