workingclasshistory: On this day, 12 May 1940, 20-year-old Austrian Jewish Edinburgh University stud

workingclasshistory:

On this day, 12 May 1940, 20-year-old Austrian Jewish Edinburgh University student Edgar Lion was arrested by British police. His friends wouldn’t see him or hear from him for years. Lion was taken to a police station, then shipped to the Isle of Man alongside thousands of other Jewish detainees where they were locked up in hotels surrounded by barbed wire. He was then taken to a dockyard and told to choose between two ships. He chose the one on the left, and so was taken to Canada – the other would end up in Australia. In Canada, Lion was then interned alongside 2,300 other Jewish refugees in internment camps alongside German Nazis who had also been interned. Here the refugees were forced to perform harsh and boring physical labour for almost no pay: in Lion’s camp, Sherbrooke, detainees could choose to make fishing nets or socks. The refugees were held in camps in appalling and unsafe conditions for nearly three years.
Learn more about struggles of Jewish people in Britain at this time in our podcast episodes 35-37 about the anti-fascist 43 Group: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/02/17/e35-37-the-43-group/
Pictured: Jewish detainees making fishnets https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1714495302068946/?type=3