"What if Frank Banikhin's 1936 Proposal to the Commission of Government to Send Skilled Jewish Refugees to Labrador to Help Develop the Interior had been accepted?"
— Paul Shea, Reader
Robert Sweeney: "There are three things. The first is obvious. Any Jewish skilled worker granted passage under this proposal would not have died in the Holocaust — which in all likelihood they did. Our denial of sanctuary killed people. So would it have made a difference? Yes.
And I have two more comments. First, the proposal was made in 1936 when Nazi Germany had yet to expand to Austria. So it would have saved the lives of these people, the German Jews, because the Austrian Jews and others would not have wanted to leave where they were. And they couldn't have claimed refugee status as the German Jews could.
Secondly, the proposal was for skilled workers. The fit between the needs of Germany and the needs of Labrador was not a good one, but a skilled worker is a skilled worker. [But] the Jewish skilled workers in Germany were pretty politicized. And they were Reform, integrated, proud that their service was in German, not Hebrew. So say we let them in: in 1939 they would have been in concentration camps, as they were in Britain. As in St. John's where the relatively small German population was in a camp at Quidi Vidi. There was no distinction between Jews and Nazis. So they would have been jailed as enemy aliens under deplorable conditions and it would have left a bitter feeling.
But that does not take away the first point, that their lives would have been saved."
Robert Sweeney teaches history at Memorial University.
