The following speech was given at the conference on Jewish Radicalism in Winnipeg 1905-1960, which took place in Winnipeg, Sept. 8-10.

My formative years were from 1929 to 1939, so you might say I am a graduate of the "school of hard knocks", but my working-class education began at least ten years prior to that.

I was six years old in 1919, so I remember the historic 1919 Winnipeg
General Strike very vividly. I also remember the conditions in which we
lived, leading up to the strike.

We lived in a tiny little house on Selkirk Ave. Our heating system
consisted of a Quebec heater in the living room, a similar one in the
dining room, and a cooking stove in the kitchen. These three stoves were
connected to one another by tin pipes, suspended from the ceiling by
chicken wire. Before going to bed my father would cover our beds with all
the winter coats he could muster to make sure we were warm in case the
fires went out during the night. There was a trap door in the kitchen
leading to a dug-out just large enough to store six bushels of potatoes to
do us during the winter months.

My father worked as a labourer ten hours a day and six days a week for a
non-union firm called Brown and Rutherford, lumber and millwork. I can't
recall what his wages were in 1919 but I do know that we lived from payday to payday.

The only vacation my father ever had was the 1919 General Strike. It was
wonderful to have father home for six solid weeks, but there was a problem: no money for groceries. I can still recall my father taking me by the hand and visiting Mrs. Greenberg, who had a small grocery store at the corner of Stella Avenue and Parr Street. That was the first time I heard the word "credit". I still remember the mounted police parading past our house and father muttering to them in Russian, "swine, Cossacks!"

The strike was broken and my father went back to work under the same
conditions as before the strike. 

I think I was first exposed to socialist thought at the King Edward school,
when I was in Grade Four, at the age of ten. There was a very bright
Ukrainian boy sitting next to me by the name of Johnny Kutchmie. Johnny
knew everything! One day he said to me, "Do you know why we are all poor and have no money? Well, I'll tell you. Because there are rich people who have all the money. Some day there will be a struggle between the rich people and the poor people. The poor people will win because there are more poor people than there are rich people. When that happens we will divide up all the money evenly and everybody will have enough!" Tevyeh Der Milkchiker would have said, "I'm willing, now all you have to do is convince the rich people." I thought that was a fine idea.

"If you think that's a good idea," said Johnny, "come to the Ukrainian
Labour Temple Sunday evening, and you will hear more good ideas. Besides, you will hear my sister and me play the piano."

"Will they let us in?" I asked. "We are Jews."

"Of course they will let you in!" said Johnny. "Our leader is Matthew
Popovitch, and his wife is Jewish! He says all working people are alike.
This is the twentieth century!" I was stunned!

Having been brought up in the North End of Winnipeg, I assumed that
everyone was either Ukrainian or Jewish. But a Ukrainian man married to a Jewish woman - that was unheard of! My sisters and I always spoke Yiddish to our parents. What about the Popovitch children? Did they speak Yiddish to their mother and Ukrainian to their father?

I persuaded my father to take me to the concert Sunday evening. The
admission was "by silver collection." Johnny and his sister played a duet
on the piano. Then the speeches began and I heard such words and phrases as "exploitation", "the working class", "solidarity", and "twentieth century".

But most of the speeches were in Ukrainian and I promptly fell asleep.
In the mid-1920s, I was a founding member of the first English- speaking
branch of the Young Poale Zion, a socialist-oriented Zionist organization.
We had debates with other Zionist organizations in which we argued that a
Jewish state had to be built along socialist lines if it was to be a "light
unto the nations." I can still remember Goldie Myerson (better known as
Golda Meir) speaking to our group at the Folk Shule, urging us to emigrate to Palestine. Two or three of our members actually left for Palestine and joined the kibbutzim.

The Great Depression broke out in 1929 and it became clear to me that we were not leaving in droves for Palestine to become kibbutzniks, and it was time to join the struggle to improve our lives right here in Canada.

My father died at the age of 59 on March 31st, 1929. The only money we had was the $500 that we received from the Hebrew Sick Benefit Society. I quit school and joined the labour force at the age of 15.

Joseph Zuken introduced me to the Progressive Arts Club in 1931. Our club room was a recreation room in Ben Popeski's basement on Burrows Avenue. We had a sketch group, a drama group and a writer's group that took turns meeting during the week, and we held an open forum every Sunday afternoon.

Almost all of us were unemployed, and our art was a reflection of the
conditions in which we lived. We proudly proclaimed that our art was a
weapon in the class struggle.

I was a member of the drama group. We didn't know the first thing about
acting, but what we lacked in technique we made up for with sincerity and
shouting.

The Progressive Arts Club was a refuge and an outlet for our rage against a system where hundreds of thousands of people were unemployed, where people lacked proper housing and died prematurely due to lack of sufficient food and medical care.

This was a time when eight top leaders of the Communist Party of Canada
were charged with sedition and thrown in jail. In our opinion, the only
thing these men were guilty of was educating and organizing the working
class and making them aware of the fact that the working people created the wealth in Canada. A campaign was launched to free the Communist leaders.

The Theatre of Action in Toronto wrote a play entitled Eight Men Speak as part of this campaign. We, the Progressive Arts Club of Winnipeg, decided to launch this play in Winnipeg, with Joseph Zuken as director. Dozens of people, from all the progressive, ethnic groups in the North End of Winnipeg, volunteered to participate in this play. Every rehearsal was like a demonstration of solidarity. We booked the Walker Theatre and proceeded with our rehearsals. But by this time our shouting must have been heard at City Hall because our City Fathers, in their wisdom, demanded to see the script. We refused their request, on the grounds that this would violate our civil rights. Then the City Fathers threatened to revoke the license of the Walker Theatre if it allowed us to present this play. So we were locked out!

In retrospect, this undemocratic action by City Hall was the best thing
that could have happened to us. The dispute generated more discussion and sympathy for us than we could possibly have achieved with a play that was written, with the best of intentions, by a committee, and acted by a group of under-rehearsed amateurs.

Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 - and the Jewish Anti-Fascist
League was organized in Winnipeg. I was chairman of the youth wing. We
rented a vacant store on Pritchard Avenue and Main Street, next to Sammy Wolch Pharmacy. Fred Donner was our executive secretary. We organized meetings, with guest speakers, to educate people about the nature of fascism and the dangers of a second world war,

One of our guest speakers was the famous American, Professor Scott Neering, who stayed in Winnipeg for a solid week and gave a series of lectures on the rise and fall of previous empires. He predicted the twilight of the British Empire and the eventual collapse of fascism, if Germany went to war. 

In 1934, the Canadian fascists declared that they would march on the
streets of Winnipeg. They assembled in Old Market Square, the traditional
starting point of many May Day working class demonstrations. But when the fascists tried to march, with their black uniforms and fascist symbols and flags, they were completely surrounded by working-class organizations, singing anti-fascist songs of solidarity. A riot broke out and several fascists landed in the hospital. That was the first and last time that
fascists tried to march in Winnipeg.

In the mid-1930s the Progressive Arts Club decided that the time for mass
chants was over, and it was now time to appeal to wider audiences and make them aware of the danger of war and fascism.

The name of the drama group was changed to New Theatre and we rented a studio downtown. The New Theatre movement became a vibrant organization and attracted people from all walks of life, both as participants and audience.

We organized classes for aspiring young actors using the Stanislavsky
Method. Then we really began to produce plays of social significance. Our
first play was an anti-war play entitled Bury the Dead by Irwin Shaw and
the second was Waiting at Madrid.

The Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936 and thousands of young men from Canada, the U.S.A., Britain and Europe volunteered to fight for the
democratically-elected government of Spain and against the fascist general
Franco's insurgent army. I still recall the names of three Jewish boys of
our group who joined the Mackenzie-Papineau battalion. They were Marvin Penn, Syd Cohen and Jerry Glow. We honour their memory.
Dr. Norman Bethune organized a medical unit for the Spanish democratic
forces. When he returned to Canada he made a cross-country tour to raise support for the Spanish government. The Anti-Fascist League sponsored one of his meetings at the old Queens Theatre. It was filled to capacity.

The slogan of the young British volunteers was "Save Madrid and you save London!" As you know, Madrid was not saved and London was not saved from the bombing. The fascists won the civil war in Spain, thanks to Hitler's Luftwaffe planes which bombed the Spanish government-held cities mercilessly, and Chamberlain's policy of "non-intervention" which in effect aided the fascists. The New Theatre produced a play based on Sinclair Lewis's novel It Can't Happen Here, which meant, of course, that fascism could "happen here", if we weren't forever vigilant.

We produced a play called Rehearsal by Albert Maltz, with Francis Goffman and Gordon Burwash in the leading roles. This play portrayed the conflict of a man's personal life and his life as a conscientious trade union
organizer. With background scenes of the Great Depression, Rehearsal came first in the Manitoba drama festival and went on to take the award for "The Best Play in English" at the National Drama Festival in London, Ontario.We produced one classic called Valpone by Ben Johnson. This play dealt with such sins of man as greed, jealousy and infidelity. The leading roles were played by Joseph Zuken, Frances Goffman and Saul Cherniak. I also participated. As usual, I was so nervous before the performance that I couldn't eat supper. After the performance, my wife Gert, the drama critic,said, "You were lousy! You might as well have eaten supper!" Thus ended my career as an actor.

It took the Second World War and the deaths of 50 million people world-wide to finally put an end to the Depression. Those of us who survived the war went back to work and some of us even went through a period of relative affluence. But we have never forgotten from whence we sprang.

In the early 1950s I joined the United Jewish People's Order. The UJPO, as it is popularly called, is a secular, socialist-oriented social and
cultural organization. It sponsored the Sholem Aleichem Shule and
kindergarden, as well as a summer camp at Husavick, Manitoba. The
organization also sponsored a national Yiddish newspaper called the
Vochenblatt and later the Canadian Jewish Outlook. Other activities
included a Yiddish reading circle, a Yiddish Folk Choir and an open forum
that discussed vital issues of the day. Today the UJPO deals with such
issues as: The dilemma of the Middle East, the NAFTA Agreement,  Medicare in Canada, adequate housing for the poor, the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City; and Rebuilding the Left.

One of our many activities is an attempt to perpetuate our Yiddish language and culture of which Mildred Gutkin spoke so eloquently. Our reasoning is twofold. First, we love our Yiddish language and culture, and second, this is our way of honouring the memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

In conclusion, I am happy to say that Jewish radicalism did not end in
1960, but is alive and well and living in Winnipeg today. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman, for inviting me to add my personal perspective on Jewish
Radicalism in Winnipeg.
 

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