Andrea Strutz (University of Graz, Austria) gave an informative lecture on Austrian Immigration to Canada - 1938 to 1970 on September 16th 2011.
Over the course of the 20th century, migration movements of Austrians to Canada have taken a number of different forms such as forced migration or voluntary (labour) migration. During WWII, Jewish immigration to Canada was restricted, although several hundred Austrian and German Jewish refugees (males) were deported from Great Britain and were interned in Eastern Canada; after a year or two, they were released from the camps. Many of these Austrian Jewish refugees decided to stay in Canada to start a new life. In the post-WWII period, when Canada opened its labour market widely to European immigrants, approximately 34,000 non-Jewish Austrian women and men migrated overseas by 1972. Furthermore, several hundred Austrian Holocaust survivors resettled in that period (mainly from Great Britain and Israel) to Canadian provinces for economic reasons, marriage or because of family reunion.
This talk explored the legal constraints and the practice of post-1945 emigration from Austria to Canada, with special attention given to the individual experiences and the memories of both Jewish and non-Jewish Austrian migrants, collected in a series of oral histories.
The event was organized by the Department of History and co-sponsored by the Waterloo Centre for German Studies and the Department of Jewish Studies.
For further information about the lecture, please read the article in our newsletter Wat's In-Sight issue 5 (PDF).