The Tailor Project

[Text: A child survivor from Poland, David describes his post-war efforts to apply for immigration to Canada under the Tailor Project.] 

David Feldman: Then came registration time. The people were registering. They needed people for labours, for loggers, for house worker, for some other thing ... for tailors. Australia, New Zealand, or Canada. Not the United States. You want to ask? 

Interviewer: I was going to ask what countries? 

David Feldman: Okay, the three countries are Canada, Australia, New Zealand. We registered everywhere. Tailors, loggers, anything, everywhere at all, a whole group of us. So, I was still in school, and then we were lucky. The first group that they were looking for was tailors to go to Canada. You go to Canada, what’s so different, we don’t know anybody. Anyway, some went to Australia, some went to Canada. We registered as tailors, none of us was tailors. Okay? So, in order to go through examination, we took a tailor, and he came in and he says, “I’m David Feldman,” sit down, okay, gave me this ... two minutes at the machine or whatever it is and so forth. They gave him a piece of paper, he’s a tailor. David Feldman is a tailor. We all paid him a five Deutschmark or whatever it was. And he was—he was glad to do it. They really ... it was just a formality, more or less, they need to have a formality. Anyway, so that’s how it came, that we went to Canada.

Okay, I left for Canada, it was 1948 in October. We left, of course, about 10 days before, on the ship. And the ship was called Samaria. Okay, Scythia and Samaria, the two sister ships, we came on the ship Scythia. We went first to Quebec City; from Quebec City, we went to Montreal. The whole group of us were single guys, 13 of us and so forth. We wanted to stay, we wanted to go to Toronto. Because we had ... no, they wanted to send us to Winnipeg, but some people went before us. And we had news that Winnipeg is very cold. Okay, so we wanted to stay in Toronto, but no. Toronto, only families, single people, you can go to Winnipeg. We were not happy. Then they wanted to send us to Sherbrooke, that’s outside of Toronto or Montreal or something. Yeah, outside of Montreal. There’re only tailors there. None of us were tailors. We were afraid we’re going to go there; they’re going to send us back to Germany. Anyway, the guy that was looking after us and so forth is a Canadian Jew, he was from Toronto or Montreal. And he looked at us and said, “I see you guys are not happy.” He spoke Yiddish obviously. I knew a few words in English and so forth. And I was the spokesman. And he said, “Well, how would you like to go to Vancouver?” “What’s Vancouver?” “Oh,” he said, “Vancouver, it’s nice and warm, there’s not too many Jews, but they’re all rich Jews living there.” We heard this is nice and warm and so forth. It took us two seconds, we looked at each other, let’s go to Vancouver. That’s what we said. So, we waited another couple of days because they made all the arrangements and so on. And they gave us sandwiches and put us on the train. Took us about three or four days, I don’t remember. And the train came to Vancouver in October. It was nice and warm. It was beautiful. We came to Vancouver. We’re happy. And that’s how it stuck in Vancouver.