On this day, 12 May 1940, 20-year-old Austrian Jewish University of Edinburgh student Edgar Lion was
On this day, 12 May 1940, 20-year-old Austrian Jewish University of Edinburgh student Edgar Lion was arrested by British police. His friends wouldn’t see him or hear from him for years. Lion was taken to a police station, then shipped to the Isle of Man alongside thousands of other Jewish detainees where they were locked up in hotels surrounded by barbed wire. He was then taken to a dockyard and told to choose between two ships. He chose the one on the left, and so was taken to Canada – the other would end up in Australia. In Canada, Lion was then interned alongside 2,300 other Jewish refugees in camps alongside German Nazis. Here the refugees were forced to perform harsh and boring physical labour for almost no pay: in Lion’s camp, Sherbrooke, detainees could choose to make fishing nets or socks. The refugees were held in camps in appalling and unsafe conditions for nearly three years. Pictured: interned Jewish forced labourers in Canada. We speak more about the British treatment of Jewish people in the 1940s in our podcast episodes 35-37, about Jewish antifascist ex-service people after the war: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e35-37-the-43-group/ https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1985643801620760/?type=3 -- source link