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"Few people equate the hamlet of Tupper (now Tomslake), a small community in the Peace River district of northeastern British Columbia, with international events that plunged the twentieth century headlong into a second devastating war. Betrayed by the international community and abandoned by the Czechoslovakian government, a small group of German Social Democrats escaped pre-war Europe only to be confined to a northern wilderness. Despite their ignoble beginnings and limited assistance from the Canadian government, and being trapped by bureaucrats to endure miserable conditions, the new inhabitants of Tupper worked hard to build a viable community. While the emergence of Tomslake was the direct result of events that transpired on the world stage, the community survived due solely to the hard work and persistence of its residents."
So writes Margaret Melanie Drysdale for her little-know Masters thesis for History at Malaspina College in 2002, Three Times Betrayed: The Sudeten Germans of Tomslake, BC.
The subject is germane to Holocaust studies because it forces one to consider the volume of immigration of German-speaking invitees to Canada during World War II versus the volume of Jewish immigrants allowed entrance during the same period.
Walter Schoen was born on March 2, 1931 in the Sudeten area of what was then Czechoslovakia. Sudetenland was a German-speaking area that had been added to Czechoslovakia in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I. Schoen's parents sympathized with the Social Democrats, a minority group that was opposed to the ambitions of Hitler's Nazi party to annex the territory to Germany, partly to salve the wounded pride of Germany after its devastating defeat in The Great War. Eventually Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously agreed to have Sudetenland ceded to Germany in 1938 as the price to pay for "Peace in our Time." This truce with Hitler was called The Munich Agreement. Walter Schoen and his parents were among a group of 518 people from the affected area who feared incarceration or death due to their political beliefs. Even though they were mostly office or factory workers with no experience in agriculture, they chose to accept an offer of asylum in Canada if they were willing to become farmers.
In 1938, Walter Schoen accompanied his parents, via Denmark, as part of a contingent of 518 refugees that were brought to the remote settlement of Tupper in the Peace River district of northeastern B.C. They were more than half of the 1024 Sudeten German refugees accepted by Canada. This venture was supervised by the Canadian Colonization Association, a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway, as much to benefit Canada as it was to save the refugees on humanitarian grounds. Workers were needed to tame wilderness for the expansion of transportation and industries. Schoen completed Grade 8 in a rural school, then attended high school in Dawson Creek. About forty of the Sudeten in the area enlisted to fight against the Nazis in the Canadian army. Schoen obtained his MEd at UBC and taught in secondary schools from 1955 to 1988. He married and has lived in Dawson Creek. B.C. In retirement, he became active in the Kiwanis Club, his local history society and he played tenor sax in the community band. His self-published memoir is The Tupper Boys, a History of the Sudeten Settlement at Tomslake, B.C. (Trafford, 2004). Also relevant is Bruce Ramsey's A History of the German-Canadians in British Columbia (Winnipeg: National Publishers Ltd., 1958).
During World War II, the Canadian High Commissioner in London, Vincent Massey, the scion of the wealthy Massey family, was decidedly anti-Jewish, influenced by the prominent and largely pro-German and anti-Semitic Cliveden set centred around Lord and Lady Astor. Meanwhile, the Canadian Committee for Jewish Refugees was formed in December of 1938, under Congress president Samuel Bronfman, and a second Jewish refugee committee was formed in March of 1939 under Montreal lawyer Saul Hayes. The racist views of the Anglophile aristocracy prevailed. On June 7, 1939, Canada denied entry to 907 Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis that was forced to return to four European ports, whereafter 254 of its passengers lost their lives due to the Holocaust. Out of the 2,300 Jews transferred from British to Canadian internment camps in 1940, only 972 were permitted to become Canadian citizens.
Therefore, the overall number of German Sudetens allowed to settle in northern British Columbia and Saskatchewan, more than a thousand, exceeded the number of Jews who were welcome to become Canadians.
By 2016, according to the Canadian Census, 3,322,405 Canadians (nearly 10 per cent of the population) reported German origins, and 404,745 people in the country reported German as their mother tongue.
In 2010, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia, German Canadian Congress president Tony Bergmeier "sparked controversy as he objected to the prominence to be given to the Holocaust exhibit in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, slated to be opened in 2013. Other ethnic group representatives, such as the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, voiced similar opinions. The GCC press release argued that the museum should 'recognize that human suffering is equal to all people. No suffering by one group of people can be more important than the suffering of others.' Bernie Farber, then president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, stated he was surprised and saddened by the GCC objections. Wendy Lampert, writing for the National Post on 28 December, pointed out that 'to suggest the Holocaust was just like any other genocide, undeserving of special recognition, is to ignore the reality of its impact on 20th-century society.'"
[BCBW 2020] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
Walter Schoen joins in Intergenerational Day at South Peace Secondary in Dawson Creek.
So writes Margaret Melanie Drysdale for her little-know Masters thesis for History at Malaspina College in 2002, Three Times Betrayed: The Sudeten Germans of Tomslake, BC.
The subject is germane to Holocaust studies because it forces one to consider the volume of immigration of German-speaking invitees to Canada during World War II versus the volume of Jewish immigrants allowed entrance during the same period.
Walter Schoen was born on March 2, 1931 in the Sudeten area of what was then Czechoslovakia. Sudetenland was a German-speaking area that had been added to Czechoslovakia in 1919 in the aftermath of World War I. Schoen's parents sympathized with the Social Democrats, a minority group that was opposed to the ambitions of Hitler's Nazi party to annex the territory to Germany, partly to salve the wounded pride of Germany after its devastating defeat in The Great War. Eventually Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously agreed to have Sudetenland ceded to Germany in 1938 as the price to pay for "Peace in our Time." This truce with Hitler was called The Munich Agreement. Walter Schoen and his parents were among a group of 518 people from the affected area who feared incarceration or death due to their political beliefs. Even though they were mostly office or factory workers with no experience in agriculture, they chose to accept an offer of asylum in Canada if they were willing to become farmers.
In 1938, Walter Schoen accompanied his parents, via Denmark, as part of a contingent of 518 refugees that were brought to the remote settlement of Tupper in the Peace River district of northeastern B.C. They were more than half of the 1024 Sudeten German refugees accepted by Canada. This venture was supervised by the Canadian Colonization Association, a subsidiary of the Canadian Pacific Railway, as much to benefit Canada as it was to save the refugees on humanitarian grounds. Workers were needed to tame wilderness for the expansion of transportation and industries. Schoen completed Grade 8 in a rural school, then attended high school in Dawson Creek. About forty of the Sudeten in the area enlisted to fight against the Nazis in the Canadian army. Schoen obtained his MEd at UBC and taught in secondary schools from 1955 to 1988. He married and has lived in Dawson Creek. B.C. In retirement, he became active in the Kiwanis Club, his local history society and he played tenor sax in the community band. His self-published memoir is The Tupper Boys, a History of the Sudeten Settlement at Tomslake, B.C. (Trafford, 2004). Also relevant is Bruce Ramsey's A History of the German-Canadians in British Columbia (Winnipeg: National Publishers Ltd., 1958).
During World War II, the Canadian High Commissioner in London, Vincent Massey, the scion of the wealthy Massey family, was decidedly anti-Jewish, influenced by the prominent and largely pro-German and anti-Semitic Cliveden set centred around Lord and Lady Astor. Meanwhile, the Canadian Committee for Jewish Refugees was formed in December of 1938, under Congress president Samuel Bronfman, and a second Jewish refugee committee was formed in March of 1939 under Montreal lawyer Saul Hayes. The racist views of the Anglophile aristocracy prevailed. On June 7, 1939, Canada denied entry to 907 Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis that was forced to return to four European ports, whereafter 254 of its passengers lost their lives due to the Holocaust. Out of the 2,300 Jews transferred from British to Canadian internment camps in 1940, only 972 were permitted to become Canadian citizens.
Therefore, the overall number of German Sudetens allowed to settle in northern British Columbia and Saskatchewan, more than a thousand, exceeded the number of Jews who were welcome to become Canadians.
By 2016, according to the Canadian Census, 3,322,405 Canadians (nearly 10 per cent of the population) reported German origins, and 404,745 people in the country reported German as their mother tongue.
In 2010, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia, German Canadian Congress president Tony Bergmeier "sparked controversy as he objected to the prominence to be given to the Holocaust exhibit in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, slated to be opened in 2013. Other ethnic group representatives, such as the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, voiced similar opinions. The GCC press release argued that the museum should 'recognize that human suffering is equal to all people. No suffering by one group of people can be more important than the suffering of others.' Bernie Farber, then president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, stated he was surprised and saddened by the GCC objections. Wendy Lampert, writing for the National Post on 28 December, pointed out that 'to suggest the Holocaust was just like any other genocide, undeserving of special recognition, is to ignore the reality of its impact on 20th-century society.'"
[BCBW 2020] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
Walter Schoen joins in Intergenerational Day at South Peace Secondary in Dawson Creek.
