Irving Abella CM OOnt FRSC was a professor of history at York University from 1968 to 2013.
He specialized in Jewish Canadian history and the Canadian labor movement. He was born and reared in Toronto, where he earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees.
He was 82.
Irving Abella cause of death: What happened to Irving Abella?
After a protracted illness, Abella died on Sunday.
Abella was especially outspoken against Canada’s postwar admittance of thousands of Nazi collaborators and war criminals, particularly members of the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, which was made up of Ukrainian nationalists and fascists.
Abella remarked in a 1997 interview with Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes” that entry into Canada was very easy for SS members since their signature tattoo indicated that they were consistently anti-communist.
Abella also wrote “Coat of Many Colors: Two Centuries of Jewish Life in Canada,” an essential work charting the history of Jews in Canada, as well as other major texts on the history of the Canadian labor movement. He spent his whole career as a teacher.
