Dear Canada: A step back in time

From Devorah's diary:

FEBRUARY 3

A strange and bizarre thing has happened. I was walking home from school, when a young kid threw what I assumed was a snowball at my back. I yelled at him and thought nothing of it until Elizabeth gasped in horror as I turned to go into my house. "Your coat!" she shouted at me. "Take it off."

We hurried into the house and I took it off and turned it around so I could see the back of it. There was a swastika on it! Really. I screamed, dropping it to the floor. Mommy came running in from the kitchen. I pointed to the coat. She picked it up, looked at it closely and said, "Where did that come from?" in a very quiet voice.

Elizabeth said that a boy hit me with something.

"But he couldn't have drawn this," I said. "He just hit me with a snowball and ran."

Mommy had bought me the coat at a factory on Main Street, only a couple of months ago. She looked inside and there it was — a swastika in red dye. She said that the snow or damp must have brought it out, but I didn't understand.

"Someone at that factory is a Nazi," she said. "Or is playing a terrible joke on the customers. I'm phoning Mr. Berdinsky right now."

We heard her angry conversation and his obvious apology. She got off the phone and said, "He wants to get to the bottom of this." He's bringing a new coat over himself tonight and picking this one up.

FEBRUARY 4

Mr. Berdinsky called to say that he had discovered the culprit, a nasty fellow who hated Jews. He'd got the job at the factory just to make trouble — he wanted to display the swastika and if a Jew bought the coat, even better. Well, now the police are dealing with him.

It's one thing to think about Nazis in Europe — it's another to realize they are right here.

From Dear Canada: Turned Away, copyright © 2005 by Carol Matas.