How Jewish ‘enemy aliens’ overcame a ‘traumatic’ stint in Canadian prison camps during the Second World War

Today, it is a garage for intercity buses in a desolate industrial section of Sherbrooke, Que., right next to a provincial prison. There is no plaque, nothing to indicate that more than 70 years ago, an intriguing chapter in Canadian history unfolded within its brick walls.

In 1940, as Nazi forces swept across Europe, the Canadian military converted the building, a onetime railway repair shop, into a prison camp to house “enemy aliens” shipped over from Britain.

But the 2,300 men of German and Austrian origin who lived for as many as three years under armed guard in the Sherbrooke camp and a handful of others in Quebec, New Brunswick and Ontario were anything but enemies.

Mostly Jews who had fled to England before the Second World War broke out, the internees were among the most passionate anti-Nazis to be found on Canadian soil. At a time when anti-Semitism was the norm, when federal immigration director Frederick Blair strove to keep Jews out of the country, they were treated as dangerous threats to Canadian security....