How Silent Were the Churches?: Canadian Protestantism and the Jewish Plight During the Nazi Era

T.D. Regehr is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan.
He is the author of Mennonites in Canada, 1939–1970: A People
Transformed, The Beauharnois Scandal: A Story of Canadian
Entrepreneurship and Politics, and Remembering Saskatchewan:

This book addresses, and partly refutes, the accusation made by Irving
Abella and Harold Troper in their book None Is Too Many—that Canadian
churches remained silent in the 1930s when their government refused to
admit Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Following a general discussion
of the roots and manifestations of racism, nationalism, and
anti-Semitism in Canada and Europe, the authors turn their attention to
Protestant denominations, large and small, in Canada. In separate
chapters, they discuss official pronouncements of various kinds made by
leaders of each denomination, and the coverage of the plight of the
Jewish refugees in various church papers. Each chapter includes short
portraits of denominational leaders who spoke out on behalf of the
refugees.

Davies and Nefsky conclude that while the churches were not silent and
did not succumb to unadulterated anti-Semitism, they were the heirs of a
classical Christian theology that included “a profound negativity
toward Jews and Judaism.” One consequence of the Holocaust, they
suggest, was to awaken the Canadian Christian mind from its dogmatic
anti-Jewish slumber.