History - Jewish Canadian service in the Second World War

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Service in the navy

Approximately 100,000 men and women served in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. Fewer than 600 of them were members of the Jewish community—less than 0.6 percent of the navy’s total enlistment. It proved to be the least common branch of the Canadian military for Jews to serve, reflecting the formal and informal policies that tended to discourage recruitment of those with non-British backgrounds. Most often a Jewish sailor would find himself the only Jew aboard his warship.

Those who did persevere to join the navy would see varied service. Many, like Gerald Rosenberg of Hamilton and Israel “Ichy” Glassman of Montréal, would sail on Royal Canadian Navy warships, making the challenging North Atlantic run escorting merchant convoys between North America and Europe. Service in the Battle of the Atlantic could be extremely dangerous duty. German submarines (known as U-boats) were constantly on the look-out for Allied ships to sink in order to break the vital flow of men and supplies across the ocean to Britain. Some Jewish sailors, like Moe Hurwitz’s brother Harry Hurwitz of Montréal, also served on the especially perilous Murmansk Run, which saw warships escort convoys of transport ships voyaging to the frigid Arctic ports of the Soviet Union to help our ally that was locked in a life-or-death struggle on the Eastern Front.

Even when U-boats were not on the scene, sailors could never let down their guard on the volatile Atlantic Ocean. The seas were often stormy, especially in the winter, and battered the relatively small corvette warships that made up the bulk of the Royal Canadian Navy’s fleet. Thick fog compounded the risks, and collisions with the other vessels in their convoys were a constant danger. When ships went down, the stakes were high; the Atlantic could be so frigid that death due to exposure came within minutes for any unfortunate sailors who ended up in the water. 

Alex Polowin of Ottawa remembered serving aboard the destroyer HMCS Huron during an attack on German vessels by half a dozen Canadian and British warships in the English Channel in April 1944. One German torpedo boat was sunk and two others damaged. Yet on the way back to port in England, the Huron was accidentally rammed by the Royal Navy’s HMS Ashanti. The damaged destroyer managed to return safely to Plymouth for repairs, and the Huron went right back into action for D-Day.

Being sunk by a German U-boat could also result in other hazardous outcomes. Harry Hurwitz survived the sinking of HMCS Athabaskan when the Canadian destroyer was torpedoed off the coast of France on April 29, 1944. He was taken prisoner by the Germans, but not before he threw away his Star of David necklace and his wallet containing Jewish prayers. He would spend the rest of the conflict in captivity as a prisoner of war but managed to conceal his religious identity from guards. He participated in a variety of resistance activities by the Allied prisoners in his camp, including surreptitiously putting dirt into the German officers’ coffee.

Some Jewish sailors took part in other kinds of tasks at sea during the war. This included the naval operations that surrounded D-Day on June 6, 1944, when a massive Allied fleet took soldiers to the beaches of Normandy, France, as the liberation of Western Europe finally began. Canadian ships, with Jewish crew members like Maurice Novak of Montréal, filled interesting roles such as escorting the Allied tug boats that pulled the large, prefabricated “Mulberry” artificial harbour components across the English Channel in the aftermath of the D-Day landings.

Among the Jewish Canadian sailors decorated for their brave service was Petty Officer Irv Kaplan of Montréal who was mentioned in dispatches for his efforts when HMCS Valleyfield was sunk south of Newfoundland in May 1944. He was mentioned in dispatches again when his new ship, HMCS Assiniboine, sank three German armed trawlers off the coast of France in August 1944. Petty Officer Max Abramson of Calgary was another decorated Jewish Canadian sailor. He was mentioned in dispatches for his role in helping HMCS St. Croix sink a German U-boat in the Atlantic in July 1942.

The dangers of serving at sea continued right up to the conclusion of the war in Europe, and Jewish sailors were in the thick of the action until the bitter end. Ralph Zbarsky of Saskatoon was a crewman aboard HMCS Esquimalt when the minesweeper was torpedoed by a U-boat just outside Halifax Harbour on April 16, 1945. Tragically, Zbarsky would die of exposure after spending hours in the frigid springtime waters of the Atlantic—a casualty of the last Royal Canadian Navy warship sunk during the Second World War.

Although they were sometimes considered as members of a lesser service, Jewish Canadian sailors also saw action in the Battle of the Atlantic with the Merchant Navy—the fleet of Allied transport ships that carried the vital war materials from North America to Europe. Even though many of its members were people too young, too old, or otherwise ineligible for service in the military, being a Merchant Navy seaman was one of the most dangerous ways a person could serve in the Second World War as their ships were prime targets for the Germans. More than 90 Jewish sailors, including John Lazarus of Montréal and Somer James of Toronto (who would earn decorations for his brave actions when the Italian port where his ship was docked came under enemy attack in 1943), were merchant seamen during the Second World War. At least 19 of these men would lose their lives.

Did you know?

When the action became intense during the war, Jewish Canadians, like most service members, would often fervently start saying their prayers. Ed Rasky of Toronto was a sick bay attendant aboard HMCS Antigonish on the North Atlantic run. When his frigate went on the attack against an enemy U-boat in November 1944, he ran to his battle station and recited the Shema (a traditional Jewish prayer generally said in times of great peril) as his warship’s depth charges were launched on the target.