Hoffman, Matthew B. & Henry Srebrnik [eds], (A Vanished Ideology: Essays on the Jewish Communist Movement in the English-Speaking World in the Twentieth Century [hc, SUNY Press, 2016] 978-1438462196 [pb, SUNY Press, 2017] 978-1438462189
Section 6.6
The Fred Rose Affair
This survey of Canadian Jews and Crime/Espionage cannot omit the Fred Rose case. Born Fishel Rosenberg in Poland in 1907, he emigrated to Canada with his family in 1920. He became a member of the Communist Party of Canada and was elected to the Federal Parliament in 1943 as the representative of a working class constituency (Cartier) in Montreal with a large Jewish immigrant population. As a Member of Parliament, Rose proposed the first federal medicare legislation and the first anti-hate legislation in Canada.
In September, 1945, the defection of a Soviet employee of the Russian Embassy in Canada (Igor Gouzenko) with numerous documents resulted in Rose’s incrimination as an active Soviet spy. He was expelled from Parliament in 1947, tried and sentenced to 6 years in prison. Released in 1951, he was unable to find work in Montreal and returned to Poland in 1953. His Canadian citizenship was subsequently revoked, barring his return to Canada. He remained in Poland until his death in 1983.
The Rose case is cited by many historians as the symbolic beginning of the Cold War in North America. It also significantly affected the Canadian Jewish community, as Rose’s popularity in his Montreal-Cartier riding was partly due to the belief that the Soviet Union was the primary force capable of stopping the Nazis in Europe. [Wikipedia] See further:
Levy, David, (Stalin’s Man in Canada: Fred Rose and Soviet Espionage [hc, Enigma Books, 2011] 978-1936274277 [pb, Enigma Books, 2011] 978-1936274543
Srebrnik, Henry Felix, (Jerusalem on the Amur: Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish Communist Movement, 1924–1951 [hc, McGill-Queen’s UP, 2008]) 978-0773534285
Wayne, Joyce. “The Cold War’s Canadian Jewish Spies,” Moment Magazine, November/December 2018 (online April 2019)
Weisbord, Merrily, (The Strangest Dream: Canadian Communists, the Spy Trials, and the Cold War hc, Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1983] 978-0886190293 [pb, Véhicule Press, 3rd edition, 2022] 978-1550655995