The Refugee Program Unravels

Abram Broitman told refugee program officials that he was single, but in truth he’d been married for at least 12 years. When he left Bucharest for Canada in July 1924, he left behind his wife, Chaika, and their three surviving children -- Anita, Aron, and Rosa – with another child expected in January. While Abram began establishing a new life in Toronto, his family was preparing to join him, and none too soon: ultimately, Chaika and their children would be among the very last refugees allowed into Canada through the program. 

Refugee Program Recap and Context

The unrest of the Ukrainian War of Independence and the violent pogroms between 1917 and 1920 led tens of thousands of Jews who had been living in what is now Ukraine – and was then part of Russia – to flee to Romania, Poland, and Constantinople in Turkey. These Russian-Jewish refugees were stateless: the new Soviet government refused to repatriate them, and their new “host” countries were unwilling to absorb them or even integrate them into existing Jewish populations. 

In Romania, tolerance of these refugees was particularly low. In 1921 the Romanian government declared its intention to expel the Russian-Jewish refugees – which is to say, to push them back to the Dniester River at the Soviet border, where they would have been shot by soldiers or drowned. Pressure from the League of Nations and other groups led to the repeal of the edict, but in 1923 Romania announced that the Russian-Jewish refugees had to leave by October of that year. Additional international pressure softened this deadline as well, but the writing was on the wall. The refugees could not return to their homes in Russia, could not stay in Romania, and had nowhere to go.

"Children rescued by JDC from the famine area of Bessarabia arrive in Bucharest." 1929. JDC Archive # 11980; NY_00947

A refugee resettlement program was established to rescue these Jews. The program never really had a name; in the relevant documents, there are only references to “the refugee situation,” “Russo-Rumanian Refugees,” the "ICA Quota," "the ICA agreement with the Canadian Government," and a Canadian "concession...to set aside the Immigration Law." The overall program was responsible for resettling refugees in Argentina, Palestine, and the United States, but this blog post focuses on the Canadian arm of the program. For the purposes of this post, then, I will refer to the Canadian part of the Russo-Romanian refugee resettlement program simply as “the program.” 

America, long the refugees’ preferred safe harbor, had established immigration quotas in 1923 and was set to make them even more restrictive in 1924. The Canadian government was less xenophobic than their American neighbor to the south, but only slightly: in addition to requiring that new immigrants to Canada be of sound mind, in good health, and financially self-sufficient, the Canadian Immigration Act of 1919 severely restricted the admission of individuals who had "peculiar customs, habits, modes of life and methods of holding property” that were not aligned with Canadian values. Individuals from specific countries, including Russia, were therefore to be denied entry because those individuals might have “dangerous ideologies” that could infect Canadian society. Between the American quotas and the Canadian restrictions, the 1920’s saw a marked decline in Jewish immigration to North America from Eastern European countries. 

The Canadian chapter of the Jewish Colonization Association, chaired by one Mr. Lyon Cohen, stepped up to help their Russian co-religionists. They appealed to the Canadian Dominion government’s Minister of Immigration, the Honorable J.A. Robb, and his deputy, Mr. W. J. Egan, to allow the entry from Romania of as many stateless Russian-Jewish refugees as possible. 

Portraits of  Lyon Cohen, J.A. Robb, and W.J. Egan

Cohen photograph Who's Who in Canada, Volume 16, 1922, page 247

Robb photograph is in the collection of Library and Archives Canada, PA 043114

Egan photograph from The Ottawa Citizen, Mon, Jun 24, 1957

Mr. Robb approved this new program in October 1923 and agreed to issue 5,000 visas to the Russian-Jewish refugees in Romania. However, there were a few stipulations:

1. The refugees needed to demonstrate that they had sufficient financial resources that they wouldn’t become a burden on the state. (If they were unable to, the Jewish philanthropic organizations facilitating refugee resettlement had to raise the funds to support them.)
2. A portion of the refugees needed to settle in the prairie provinces and work as farmers. 
3. A “fair share” of the refugees needed to be transported on Canadian-flagged ships.

Between November 1923 and October 1924, thanks to the efforts of the ICA, JDC, JCA-Canada, and HIAS, some 2,500 Russian-Jewish refugees were successfully relocated from Romania to cities and farms across Canada. According to JCA annual reports, the number of stateless Russian-Jewish refugees in Romania dropped from 45,000 in 1922 to 13,000 in 1923, and was down to just 1,500 in 1924. Only a fraction of these individuals had gone to Canada; the rest had found their way to other countries that would accept them. By the summer of 1924, there were so few refugees left in Romania that on July 31, the Central Relief committee of the JDC closed its office in Bucharest. It was left to the local representatives of the program to get the last 1,500 refugees onto ships out of Europe. 

In the meantime, although almost all the Russo-Jewish refugees in Romania had been successfully rescued, there were still thousands of stateless Jews stuck at ports across Europe. Many of them held valid visas for entry into the United States, and had already made their way overland to European ports on their way to America, when draconian changes to US immigration policy effectively closed American borders – even to those individuals with valid entry visas. Some even made it all the way to American waters, only to be denied entry and turned back to Europe because the new immigration quotas had already been filled. 

Thus, thousands of stateless Russian Jewish refugees wound up stranded in European ports. They could not return to their country of origin (Russia,) and they were unwelcome in the intermediate countries (Romania, Poland, and Turkey) where they had been refugees during their journey to the ports. Even their movements in the port countries (primarily France, Germany, and England) were severely restricted. 

The JDC and the JCA lobbied for the remaining 2,000 Canadian visas to be issued to the Jewish refugees stranded at the ports. After all, they were exactly the type of refugees that the program had been designed to help.

But the Canadian authorities disagreed. In September of 1924, Mr. Robb announced that, going forward, all Jewish immigrants would have to qualify as agricultural workers, with “reasonable assurance that they intend to remain on farms” -- a move that effectively barred Russian Jews from entering Canada. A newspaper article about this new policy, published in the Ontario-based Brantford Expositor on September 13, 1924, was titled “Toronto Jews See Tragedy in Immigration Ruling.” 

In a letter dated October 20, 1924, Mr. Egan wrote the following to the JCA in Paris:

 “[Y]ou still are of the opinion that the Russians at the various ports are refugees in every sense of the word. That is the difficulty between us. We tell you why we granted a quota of 5,000, and the type of Russian Jewish refugee that comes under same, but you insisted that your refugee is equally admissible, and we say no. That is why I say that we are administering the law as far as entrance into Canada is concerned, and not on your decision as to what a refugee is or may be.” (Dworkin Archive: 1924_10_20 ICA-S-CB-3)

The remaining 2,000 visas were never issued, and the Canadian program was officially closed. 

Possible Causes for Cancellation

It seems safe to assume that the program wasn’t cancelled over a disagreement about who counted as a refugee. It had originally been launched with three stipulations: that the refugees not be financially reliant on the Canadian government, that they work primarily as farmers, and that they sail on Canadian ships. Were these conditions met?

Financial Matters and Inter-Organizational Disputes

The first condition for the entry into Canada of 5,000 refugees was that they not become a burden on the state. In practice, this meant that Jewish organizations needed to support the refugees until they could support themselves. The program was cobbled together at a time before there were any formal structures for supporting refugees, and none of the governments involved – Canadian, American, Soviet, or Romanian – provided financial resources to support refugee resettlement. A full review of the costs of the project is impossible to reconstruct, but correspondence in the JDC and JCA archives makes this much clear: whatever funds were raised were insufficient to the need. 

Early on, the Canadian JCA appealed to American philanthropic organizations to support refugee resettlement efforts in Canada. The Canadian JCA had a message for the Americans, and it was this: If your government hadn’t shut its borders, these refugees would be coming to you, and you would be financially responsible for them. But since the refugees are coming to us, and we have far fewer financial resources than you do, it is your ethical duty to help us defray the cost of absorbing them.

While the Canadian JCA did indeed receive funds from American groups, in practice, the task of supporting individual families often fell to local communities. There is no evidence that the Canadian Dominion government felt that the refugees lacked sufficient support once they were in-country, so this may not have been a major factor in the decision to end the program; but it certainly led to considerable stress across the Canadian Jewish world. 

To Farm or Not to Farm

Another stipulation of the Canadian program was that a portion of the refugees be sent to JCA agricultural colonies in the prairie provinces. But correspondence between Canadian JCA representatives in the summer of 1924 – as Abram Broitman was about to arrive – revealed that this proved impossible. Try as the JCA might, they were unable to turn the new arrivals into farmhands. The fact was that the refugees, who were physically very frail and had no agricultural experience, were simply not well suited for farm work. Even the JCA’s own Jewish-led colonies turned most of them away.

Mr. Robb justified the decision to suspend the remaining 2,000 visas in part by pointing to Canada’s need for new farm workers, a need that was clearly not being met by the Russian Jewish refugees. But was this the true reason? After all, Canada really had needed farm workers when the program was established in 1923; but in 1924, a drought in the west meant that there was limited need for farm workers of any nationality. Was the farming issue merely a pretext for anti-Jewish legislation?

Canadian authorities insisted that their decision to cancel the remaining 2,000 visas was not an anti-Jewish act. Indeed, in a letter to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency dated October 27, 1924, a Canadian immigration official declared that “Canada does not say, to use the phrase employed on the subject of the United States, that she prefers persons belonging to the Nordic race.” Less than two months later, though, Mr. Robb admitted that “the immigration of Northern Europeans is the chief objective of the new policy.” 

Steamship Troubles

The original deal between the JCA and the Canadian government called for Canadian-flagged steamships to be used to transport the refugees. However, the JCA did not honor this stipulation. Of the eleven ships that carried refugees to Canada, only the first three were Canadian-flagged. The reason: the Paris-based ICA – an organization independent of the Canadian JCA – had struck a deal with a French shipping line, the Fabre Line, which offered deeply discounted fares in exchange for the ICA’s business. Given the enormous sums of money being spent to help the waiting refugees in Romania, evacuate them from Europe, and then support them in their new countries, the JCA couldn’t afford to turn down the deal. 

Unfortunately, this decision had ripple effects back in Canada. On August 18, 1924, a meeting was convened in Ottawa at which representatives of the Dominion government, the JCA, and the Canadian steamship companies met to discuss why refugees had arrived on European-flagged ships. (Dworkin Archive 1924_08_22 ICA-S-CB-18-1924). The Canadian shipping line representatives did not believe they were receiving their “fair share” of passengers, and were thus losing out on considerable potential income. 

Ship Name	Line	Dates	Ports of Departure	Port of Arrival
SS Montclaire	Canadian Pacific	16 Nov 1923	Antwerp, Belgium & Southampton, UK	Saint John, NB
SS Melita	Canadian Pacific	2 Dec 1923 - 11 Dec 1923	Antwerp, Belgium & Southampton, UK	Saint John, NB
SS Minnedosa	Canadian Pacific	24 Dec 1923	Antwerp, Belgium & Southampton, UK	Saint John, NB
SS Canada	Fabre Line	8 Dec 1923 - Jan 1924	Constanța, Romania	Halifax, NS
SS Asia	Fabre Line	16 Jan 1924 - Feb 1924	Constanța, Romania	Halifax, NS
SS Braga	Fabre Line	16 Mar 1924 - Apr 1924	Constanța, Romania	Halifax, NS
SS Madonna	Fabre Line	26 Apr 1924 - 29 May 1924	Constanța, Romania	Halifax, NS
SS Asia	Fabre Line	7 Jul 1924 - 31 July 1924	Constanța, Romania	Halifax, NS
SS Madonna	Fabre Line	9 Aug 1924 - 29 Aug 1924	Constanța, Romania	Halifax, NS
SS Braga	Fabre Line	7 Sep 1924 - 30 Sep 1924	Constanța, Romania	Halifax, NS
SS Presidente Wilson	Austro-Americana Line	5 Nov 1924 - 20 Nov 1924	Trieste, Italy	Halifax, NS

Table listing the ships involved in the Program, as reconstructed through review of "Canada, Ocean Arrivals (Form 30A), 1919-1924" database at Ancestry.com. Internal documents indicate that the Presidente Wilson was the 12th ship in the program, but I was only able to find 11 major groups. 

The cash-strapped Jewish philanthropic organizations had used the less expensive Fabre Line for the groups of refugees sent in July and August, and they did so again in September 1924. Perhaps the Europe-based ICA underestimated the seriousness of Mr. Egan’s threat to cancel the Canadian program. In a letter dated August 1, 1924, Mr. Egan reiterated his position, and warned that a failure to honor it would jeopardize the program: 

“[T]he balance of the Russian Jewish refugees’ movement was granted with the distinct understanding that if we included refugees on the continent but outside of Romania, a fair share of the business would be given to the Canadian lines. Unless this is adhered to, the ICA Quota will be strictly confined to Russian Jewish refugees now in Romania and visas will be granted only in Bucharest.” Dworkin 1924_08_01 ICA-S-CB-3

Interestingly, this statement seems to indicate that the Canadian government would in fact have accepted the Russian-Jewish refugees stranded in non-Romanian ports around Europe, as long as the program’s business was given to Canadian shipping lines; but the ICA concluded that it could not afford to do so. Sure enough, two months later, Deputy Egan declared that the remaining refugees were not refugees at all and therefore not eligible for program visas.

The Bolshevik Scare and Potential American Resistance 

We have discussed the original three stipulations of the program; but a fourth factor likely carried the most weight in the decision to cancel it. It was the rise of the new Communist regime in the Soviet Union, and the accompanying “Bolshevik scare,” that had led to the restrictive Johnson-Reed Act in the US. Of course, this affected Canadian politics as well. The JCA actually had to reassure the Canadian government that the refugees fleeing persecution at the hands of the Bolsheviks were not themselves Bolsheviks. In a letter dated June 5, 1924, a JCA representative wrote to Mr. Egan and Mr. Robb, “We wish further to assure you that we have no desire to assist in any manner, Bolshevists to come to this country.” Dworkin 1924_06_05 ICA-S-CB-3

It is likely – although there is no documentation to positively substantiate it – that American authorities were quite unhappy that the Canadian government was considering admitting the Jews stuck in the European ports. An article published in the Jewish Daily Bulletin on November 13, 1924, quoted Mr. Egan as saying that "The Canadian Government had a gentleman’s agreement with Washington to which it desired to live up to, that Canada should not admit immigrants who held American visas." Many of those individuals had been bound for the US and did hold valid American entry visas, and America was worried that allowing them into Canada would only make it easier for them to enter the States. Deputy Egan was clear about the American position. He stated that “our neighbor south of the boundary would seriously protest against using Canada as a back door for the United States admitting into Canada those who could not enter the United States on account of the recent legislation.” This American pressure doubtless contributed to Canada’s decision to discontinue the program.

Conclusions

Anti-immigrant, anti-Communist, and general anti-Jewish sentiment, as well as American pressure, probably all played a role in the cancellation of the program, and the JCA’s decision not to give their business to the Canadian steamship companies did not help matters. The failure of the refugees to become farmers, and the fact that most of them consequently did not settle in the prairie provinces, provided convenient, and perhaps reasonable, justification for the withdrawal of the remaining 2,000 visas. Whatever the reasons, the end result was that the program was shut down and the flow of Russian-Jewish refugees to Canada was stopped.

An article in the Jewish Daily Bulletin dated November 13, 1924, titled “Blame Paris ICA for Canadian Government’s Cancellation of Agreement” noted that “2,500 refugees have already come into Canada with the help of the Paris ICA, and 496 are now on the high seas from Trieste to arrive in Canada at the end of November.” They were referring to the SS Presidente Wilson, which had set sail on November 5, 1924. It was the program’s last ship to leave Europe. Chaika, Anita, Aron, and Rosa Broitman were on board.