Part Of
Benjamin Dunkelman fonds
Level
Fonds
ID
Fonds 2
Source
Archival Descriptions
Part Of
Benjamin Dunkelman fonds
Level
Fonds
Fonds
2
Material Format
multiple media
Date
1898, [192-?]-1997
Physical Description
80 cm of textual records and other material
Admin History/Bio
Benjamin Dunkelman (1913–1997) was a successful businessman and president of Tip Top Tailors. He had a distinguished military career in both the Canadian Army during the Second World War and in the Haganah during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
Benjamin was born in Toronto to David Dunkelman (1883–1978) and Rose (née Miller, 1889–1949). He had three sisters and two brothers: Joseph, a movie executive; Ernest, a manufacturer; Zelda; Veronica; and Theodora. His father, David, was a successful entrepreneur who established Tip Top Tailors in 1910. Both David and his wife Rose were fervent Zionists.
Benjamin attended Upper Canada College and, at the age of eighteen, visited Palestine for the first time. While in Palestine, he worked for a year on a kibbutz, mostly as a guard. During the Second World War, he served as a major in the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada; as major, he gained respect for his knowledge of mortars. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1945 for his role in the final Allied assault on Germany. Two years later, Benjamin returned to Palestine to join the Haganah in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. As a commander, he captured Nazareth and brought northern Galilee under Jewish control. Near the end of the war, he met and married Yael Lifshitz (m. Dunkelman), a corporal in the Israeli army. Benjamin was elected national commander of the Jewish War Veterans of Canada in 1977.
In addition to his work as a soldier, Benjamin was a successful businessman. He served as president of Tip Top Tailors after his father stepped down; he was also director of Colonial Finance Corporation, president of Cloverdale Shopping Centre, and president of Renforth Developments. Besides operating the Dunkelman Gallery, Benjamin and his wife, Yael, ran the Constellation Hotel and Dunkelman’s Restaurant.
Dunkelman later wrote of his experiences in both wars in his autobiography "Dual Allegiance" (published by MacMIllan). As well as the DSO, Dunkelman was awarded the Fighter’s Decoration of the State of Israel (1970), and an Israel Bonds Award Dinner in Tribute to Ben Dunkelman (1977). He was a guest of honour both at a reception hosted by the Canadian Society for the Weizmann Institute of Science and the veterans of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada (1976) and at a 7th Brigade Reunion in Israel (1991).
Scope and Content
Fonds consists of records documenting Benjamin Dunkelman's personal, business, and military activities. Included is personal and business correspondence and other records, maps, photographs, news clippings, and scrapbooks assembled by Dunkelman. The bulk of the records relate both to Dunkelman’s autobiography Dual allegiance and to his military career in the Second World War and in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Other records relate to his business work with Tip Top Tailors, the Constellation Hotel, Dunkelman’s Restaurant, and the Dunkelman Gallery, as well as to his Zionist actvities, his writing and public speeches, and his personal life.
The fonds is organized into the following series: Personal records and correspondence, Zionist materials, Businesses, Second World War, Arab-Israeli War, Dual Allegiance, and Speeches.
Notes
Physical description note: Includes 218 photographs, 60 maps, 7 postcards, 5 architectural drawings, and 3 albums.
Associated material note: see the Ben Dunkelman fonds at Library and Archives Canada.
Name Access
Dunkelman, Benjamin, 1913-1997
Subjects
Authors
Israel-Arab War, 1948-1949
World War, 1939-1945
Related Material
See fonds #39 (Rose Dunkelman fonds).
Creator
Dunkelman, Benjamin, 1913-1997
Accession Number
2000-3-4
Source
Archival Descriptions
Part Of
Paul Edell fonds
Community activities series
Level
Series
ID
Fonds 5; Series 2
Source
Archival Descriptions
Part Of
Paul Edell fonds
Community activities series
Level
Series
Fonds
5
Series
2
Material Format
textual record
Date
1919-1978
Physical Description
5 cm of textual records
Scope and Content
Series consists of correspondence and a certificate relating to some of Paul Edell’s community activities including Shomrai Shabbos and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations.
Source
Archival Descriptions
Part Of
Henry Cassel fonds
Level
Fonds
ID
Fonds 93
Source
Archival Descriptions
Part Of
Henry Cassel fonds
Level
Fonds
Fonds
93
Material Format
textual record
graphic material
Date
[ca. 1900]-2000, predominant 1929-1947
Physical Description
8 cm of textual records
3 albums (ca. 210 photographs)
2 photographs
Admin History/Bio
Heinz Kassel (1912-2009) (later changed to Henry Cassel) was a German refugee during the Second World War who was classified as an enemy alien by the British government. He spent two years in an internment camp for prisoners of war (POWs) in Quebec. He later became a naturalized Canadian citizen and enlisted in the Canadian military.
Heinz was born on October 25, 1912 in Aschaffenburg, Germany to Adolf and Olga Kassel. Adolf owned a successful banking business which he had inherited from his father. The family resided above the bank and lived a comfortable life during these early years. They moved to Frankfurt around 1920 after Adolf sold his business to buy a partnership in a bank there.
Heinz’s parents had hoped that he would one day become a corporate lawyer. In 1931, in preparation for his future career, he began studying law and economics at Frankfurt University. He enjoyed his initial university years. However, after Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, he became alarmed when his non-Jewish university friends began ignoring him and when the German government passed laws forbidding Jews from practicing law in court. Determined to leave Germany and seek out a better life elsewhere, he begged his parents to immigrate with him to the United States. They refused to go, unwilling to leave behind the life they had worked so hard to build. In accordance with his parents’ wishes, Heinz relocated to nearby Italy instead of the US in 1934. He learned Italian and eventually secured a job with an engineering firm.
Sensing that the political climate in Italy was becoming dangerous for Jewish people, Heinz applied for immigration to the US in early 1939. Eager to leave Italy, he relocated to London to await the approval of his US visa. He left just in time: Britain declared war on Germany less than a week after his arrival. His parents, in turn, managed to escape to Holland. Soon after Britain’s declaration, all immigrants from enemy countries were considered enemy aliens and suspected of being spies.
On May 12, 1940, the British military arrested Heinz and interned him with other German immigrants and POWs. He believed his detainment was only a precautionary measure and that he would be cleared within a few days. However, the British shipped him to the Isle of Man where he remained for several months. Fearing an invasion, the British shipped 3,000 of the POWs, including Kassel, to Quebec, where he was briefly interned at a POW camp set up at the Plains of Abraham. In October 1940, he was moved with 736 other refugees to an abandoned railway yard (later known as “Camp N”) in Newington, near Sherbrooke, Quebec. While there, he confronted a great deal of antisemitism from the guards.
While he was interned in Quebec, the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) interviewed him and other Jewish prisoners in order to lobby for their release. Realizing that the internees were not POWs, the Canadian government declared the camp a refugee camp in 1941. By October 1942, the CJC was successful in helping Heinz secure employment with Benjamin Pape & Company in Toronto.
Heinz met Reta Freeman in Toronto and they were married in November 1944. Reta was born and raised in Toronto. After their nuptials, they were both briefly classified as enemy aliens and had to report to the RCMP on a regular basis. Shortly thereafter, Heinz enlisted in the Royal Canadian Army and was sent to basic training in Manitoba. On January 21, 1946 he was granted landed immigrant status, and in April of that year, he became a citizen.
After the war, Heinz learned that his parents as well as other relatives had been transported to concentration camps and had not survived. He was certainly one of the few fortunate ones to leave the country, despite the circumstances of his removal. He resented being interned for so long, but did not blame the British for rounding him up with other Germans based on their initial fears regarding enemy aliens. His feelings about Canada's treatment of him during that time, however, were not as sympathetic.
The couple lived their lives in Toronto. They first resided at 2346 Yonge Street. Heinz legally changed his name to Henry Cassel. He worked as an accountant and later was a controller for the United Jewish Welfare Fund. The couple had two children: Andrew (b. 1947) and Richard (b. 1951). Reta passed away in August 1962 and Henry later remarried Esther Cassel. He passed away at the age of 96 on February 15, 2009.
Custodial History
Records were created and accumulated by Henry Cassel. His sons donated them to the OJA after his death.
Scope and Content
Fonds consists of records documenting the life of Henry Cassel, particularly his attempt to emigrate from Europe prior to the Second World War and his internment in Canada as a German prisoner of war (POW). Included is personal correspondence between Cassel and his parents; correspondence written by Cassel to potential employers and Canadian Jewish agencies; legal documents and certificates, such as Cassel's birth certificate and passport; family photo albums documenting the family and lives of Henry Cassel and his wife Reta; Cassel's autobiography; a journal and notebook written by Cassel during his internment; and, other internment records, such as government forms and poems and songs written by internees. Also included are newspaper clippings, articles, financial statements, genealogical research, and antisemitic ephemera collected by Cassel. Of particular note are newsletters that were produced during the 1990s by ex-internees who had kept in touch over the years. Records are arranged into 16 files.
Notes
Textual records in the fonds were reduced from ca. 20 cm to 8 cm. Please see accession record for further details about the culled material.
Associated material notes: for related records at other archives, please see: the UJRA case files at the National CJC Archive in Montreal and the holdings at Library and Archives Canada (such as, the Directorate of Internment Operations series in the Department of National Defense fonds R112-0-2-E)
Name Access
Cassel, Henry, 1912-2009
Subjects
Europe--Emigration and immigration
Prisoners of war
Access Restriction
Partially closed. Researchers must receive permission from the OJA director prior to accessing some of the records.
Related Material
See: Canadian Jewish Congress case files in RG 282 and accession #2005-10-1.
Creator
Cassel, Henry, 1912-2009
Accession Number
2010-4-5
Source
Archival Descriptions