Histories
of the
Jewish Community
of
Sherbrooke, Quebec

1860-1990

These stories are accessable by clicking orange links below:

The Sherbrooke Jewish Community History Project consists of a group of people who are interested in documenting and preserving the history of the Jewish Community in Sherbrooke from its beginning in the 19th century until the final sale of the Synagogue in 1987. This website is part of that project.

There are many published studies of different aspects of the Jewish Community of Sherbrooke that have been written over the past few decades. The first and most complete of these was written about one family, The Echenbergs. Nevertheless the experience of this family living in Sherbrooke gives a rather complete historical picture, at least from the arrival of the first family member in 1880.

The Founders of Sherbrooke Congregation
Deborah Glassman

This is not yet a list of the Ostropolers; it is a first step in sorting them. It begins with the records created by the legal petitions for there to be a recognized authority to record Jewish births, deaths, and marriages in the town of Sherbrooke, District of St Francis, in Quebec.

A Selected Chapter:
The Echenbergs of Ostropol and Sherbrooke:
A Tale of Two Shtetls
Myron Echenberg and Ruth Tannenbaum

Read the Rivetting Family Odyssey from Ostropol, Ukraine to Sherbrooke, Canada.
First published in conjunction with a Echeberg Family Reunion near Sherbrooke in 1989.

Above is the link to a selected chapter from the "Tale of Two Shtetls".

Below is the link to a fuller description of the "Tale of Two Shtetls"

The book has been published both in English and in French.

The Echenbergs of Ostropol and Sherbrooke:
A Tale of Two Shtetls
Dean & Myron Echenberg,
Deborah Glassman, and Ruth Tannenbaum

"Sherbrooke residents who were born in Ostropol"
by Deborah Glassman

During the late 19th and early 20th century many different families moved from Ostropol to a new home in Sherbrooke. Deborah Glasman has documented at least at least 60 people who immigrated and qujite a number of others who went back and forth. Click above to see the names.

The Last Jews of Sherbrooke
by Louise Abbott

A story about the final services at the Sherbrooke Synogogue before it was sold. This article, which first appeared in The Montreal Gazette on 7 April 2001, won the Norman Kucharsky Award for Cultural and Artistic Journalism given by the Professional Writers Association of Canada. It was reprinted in Quebec Heritage News in December 2007 and the Montreal Forum in 2008.

"Ostropol on the St. Francis:
The Jewish Community of Sherbrooke"
by Michael Benazon

From the *Journal of Eastern Townships Studies/Revue d'etudes des Cantons de l'Est* (JETS) (Number 12, Spring 1998)

Jews and French Quebecers:Two Hundred Years of Shared History
Jacques Langlais, David Rome, and Barbara Young, translator

"Jews and French Quebecers recount a saga of intense interest for the whole of Canada, let alone societies elsewhere. This work, now translated into English, represents the viewpoints of two friends from differing cultural and religious traditions. One is a French Quebecer and a Christian; the other is Jewish and also calls Quebec his home. Both men are bilingual. Jacques Langlais and David Rome examine the merging — through alterations of close co-operation and socio-political clashes — of two Quebec ethno-cultural communities: one French, already rooted in the land of Quebec and its religio-cultural tradition; the other, Jewish, migrating from Europe through the last two centuries, equally rooted in its Jewish-Yiddish tradition. In Quebec both communities have learned to build and live together as well as to share their respective cultural heritages. This remarkable experience, two hundred years of intercultural covivance (coexistence), in a world fraught with ethnic tensions serves as a model for both Canada and other countries."

How Jewish ‘enemy aliens’ overcame a ‘traumatic’ stint
in Canadian prison camps during the Second World War
by Graeme Hamilton

The history of the German Jews who were interned among German Army POWs in a camp near Sherbrooke during World War II, and their interaction with the Sherbrooke Jewish Community, who tried to reach out to them to provide support.

photos: le camp d'internement no 42
(camp Newington), Sherbrooke 1944 -1945
par Vicky Lapointe

During the Second World War, several camps were established in Quebec. Camp Newington (Camp 42 or Camp N) was located along the Saint-François River, at the intersection of Bowen South and Talbot. It was built in the former Quebec Central Railway workshops and operated from October 1940 to July 1946. It housed mainly German and Austrian Jewish refugees (1940-1942), then German merchant seamen (1942-1946), for a total of approximately 1,400 people during the war.

From refugees to enemy aliens
the little-known saga
of Jewish internees in Canada
by Catherine Solyom

Canada used six internment camps in Quebec, more across the country, to house 2,300 Jewish boys and men who fled Nazi Europe during the Second World War.