FEDERMAN, MAX

FEDERMAN, MAX (1902–1991), Canadian labor leader and Zionist. Federman was born in Dzialoszyce, Poland, and in 1920 joined his father, who had previously immigrated to Toronto. Federman found work in the fur industry and became active in the International Union of Fur and Leather Workers. A committed Socialist and strident anti-Communist, he spent 20 years battling Communist infiltration of his union and was regularly denounced as a class renegade in the Vochenblatt, the Yiddish Communist weekly in Toronto. In 1935, his union split along ideological lines and finally dissolved in 1955. The union's members joined the Amalgamated Meat Cutters of the afl/cio. Federman eventually became manager of the union's Fur and Leather Department in Toronto.

Federman was also active on behalf of the Toronto Jewish community. In the aftermath of World War ii he helped win labor support for the reopening of Canadian immigration and, especially, the removal of barriers to Jewish immigration. He represented labor in fur industry negotiations with the Canadian government regarding the postwar admission of Jewish furriers to Canada from Europe. When the government agreed to the admission of 500 fur workers and their families, Federman was part of the Canadian team that visited Displaced Persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy to select the workers.

An ardent Zionist, Federman was chairman of *Aḥdut ha-Avodah-Poalei Zion and instrumental in establishing a vocational training school in Upper Galilee in 1961. In addition, he was active in numerous labor and communal organizations in Toronto, including the Trades and Labour Council, the Executive Trade Union Committee, the Histadrut, the Jewish Labour Committee, the Borochov School, the Co-Operative Commonwealth Federation (ccf) and its successor, the New Democratic Party. Following an upsurge in antisemitic hate activity in Toronto in the early 1960s, Federman joined the Community Anti-Nazi Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

[Frank Bialystok (2^nd ed.)]