Montreal Gazette
Thu Mar 11 2010
Page: A3
Section: News
Byline: MICHELLE LALONDE
Source: The Gazette

Months before January’s earthquake in Haiti, Montreal researchers were planning an exhibit to pay homage to Haiti’s little-known campaign to help European Jews in the Second World War.

As that exhibit opened last night at the Fédération CJA, prominent members of Montreal’s Jewish and Haitian communities noted its special poignancy, with Haiti struggling to rebuild and Montreal’s Jewish community coming to its aid.

The exhibit was conceived as a way to celebrate Haiti’s efforts to provide asylum to Jewish refugees from Europe in the late 1930s. In the spring of 1939, as Hitler’s mobile extermination units were beginning to assassinate Jews and the first concentration camps were opening, Haitian President Sténio Vincent issued a decree that permitted Jewish refugees from Europe to obtain Haitian nationality.

The procedure, called “naturalization in absentia,” allowed hundreds of Jews – some of whom were already imprisoned in the camps – to immigrate to Haiti. In fact, Haiti had offered to welcome as many as 50,000 Jews, but United States scuttled that plan.

“In the grand scheme of things, Haiti’s efforts to save a few hundred persecuted Jews may seem insignificant,” the exhibit notes in its introduction. “But in those days, that this impoverished, almost invisible nation would dare take a stand against Nazi Germany was quite remarkable.”

Entitled Jews and Haitians: A Forgotten History, the exhibit is co-ordinated by the Quebec Jewish Congress and Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, in partnership with the Centre International de Documentation et d’Information Haïtienne, Caribéenne et Afro-canadienne and Images Interculturelles.

The exhibit can be viewed at the Fédération CJA, 5151 Côte Ste. Catherine Rd. until March 21. It is designed to be mobile, and its creators hope it can serve as an educational tool in schools, museums or libraries.