Isaac Herbert Isselbaecher kept this notebook while detained in an internment camp in Quebec. He used it to practice French exercises with the hope of obtaining his high school diploma.
Internment Camps in Canada
As a German Jew, Herbert Isselbaecher fled his country in July 1939 and went to England. Although a tribunal ruled that he was a refugee from Nazi oppression, he was arrested and detained as an “enemy alien”. Herbert was sent to Canada on July 13, 1940, and interned in Camp N near Sherbrooke, Quebec.
Canada’s internment camps were created during the war to detain citizens of enemy countries, mainly Germans, Japanese and Italians. Many Jewish refugees from those countries were also detained in the camps.
Liberated in 1942, Herbert married Fanny Azeff and obtained his Canadian citizenship four years later.
Jason Issley, their grandson, donated this notebook to the Montreal Holocaust Museum in 1998.
This project is part of the implementation of the Plan culturel numérique du Québec.
