Avi Benlolo: Christie Pits riot against swastika clubs showed we can stand up to evil

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As a Holocaust educator, there is only one fundamental final question that comes up in every workshop: could the Holocaust happen again? The question itself is not really about the Holocaust and other forms of genocide and atrocities. It’s about the very essence of human nature itself.

What turns an ordinary civilized person, who despite having an educated and perhaps even a religious upbringing into a monster? After all, the Nazis themselves were ordinary people, many of whom came from religious upbringing that was supposed to impart ethics and morality.

The infamous commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss himself hailed from a religious Catholic family where it’s said there was an emphasis on sin, guilt and the need for penance. None of that mattered, at Auschwitz, where he oversaw the murder of over 1.2 million people. At the end of every “work-day,” he would join his family for supper.

There were very few acts of defiance against the rising tide of Nazism early on, as Hitler rose to power. The ideology itself was not confined to Germany, it began spreading around the world like a virus. Hitler harnessed pre-existing, often religious based, antisemitism to spread his ideology of white power.

Toronto was not impervious to the Nazi ideology. Antisemitism was already a common thread in the fabric of the white-anglo-saxon-protestant society at the time. Most social clubs barred Jews from membership. Certain neighbourhoods and even areas in cottage country barred Jews from buying property and restrictive quotas against them existed in academia and the professions.

With Hitler’s rise to power, Nazism gained strength in Canada. Swastika clubs began forming in Toronto in the summer of 1933, months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Their prime target was the Jewish community, the largest minority group in the city at the time. But there was another group that was also suffering discrimination, the Italians.

Predisposed to antisemitism and motivated by the rising tide of Nazism, the swastika clubs provoked Jewish people by banning them from Toronto’s beaches and displaying the swastika across the city. This week, marks the 90th anniversary of what would become known as the “Christie Pits Riot” that was the biggest most profound insurrection in the city.

It was also the most substantive act of defiance outside of Europe against the rising tide of Nazism, preceding the Holocaust. Jewish and Italian youth had had enough. When a swastika was unfurled at a baseball game held at Christie Pits, fights broke out in the city’s core between them and members of the swastika clubs.

The rampage lasted most of the night, but the swastika clubs were pushed back into the holes they crept out of. While Anti-Jewish and Anti-Italian hate persisted beyond that fateful night, the course of history in this city was forever changed.

The swastika clubs dissipated over time and the flag itself never made a substantive showing again in this city. The Jewish and Italian communities acted before Nazis were able to take hold of Toronto. Evil can be challenged. The Christie Pits riot was an invaluable lesson that showed that when good people come together, they can push back hate and discrimination, albeit non-violence is preferable.

In his farewell letter to his son before his execution, Höss wrote, “the biggest mistake of my life was that I believed everything faithfully which came from the top, and I didn’t dare to have the least bit of doubt about the truth of that which was presented to me.” Perhaps, just perhaps, had there been a Christie Pits-like riot in Berlin against the rising tide of Nazism, the Holocaust could have been averted. We must never be silent.

Christie Pits paved the way to a more tolerant and harmonious Toronto, a city that has become the central hub for immigration to Canada. The mostly respectful cultural mosaic in which we live today is built on the historic defiance of the Jewish and Italian youth who fought against hate in this city on that fateful day. We owe them our gratitude.

National Post

Avi Benlolo is the founder and chairman of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative.