Monty Berger; PR Executive
Hyfler/Rosner
Journalist who became a Canadian pioneer in public relations
also served with distinction as an RCAF ground officer
during the invasion of Normandy
F.F. LANGAN
Special to The Globe and Mail
TORONTO -- Monty Berger was a pioneer in public relations,
an entrepreneur who went out on his own and built a
successful business after being told he wouldn't get very
far because he was Jewish.
But like many of his generation, his most dramatic years
occurred during the Second World War. He served as an RCAF
intelligence officer with 126 Wing, Canada's top-scoring
Spitfire unit.
As a flight lieutenant, he went ashore at Normandy on D-Day
plus one, on June 7, 1944. It had been a rough crossing from
England on a landing craft, and he and an army intelligence
officer drove their Jeep into the water only to discover
that the vessel had stopped too far from shore. When the
ramp dropped, they were soon up to their necks in water. The
Jeep, which had been waterproofed and equipped with a
snorkel to deal with such mishaps, reached the beach and Mr.
Berger stepped out, making him the first RCAF ground officer
to set foot in Europe after the invasion.
He was one of more than 1,100 pilots, mechanics, armourers
and other specialists assigned to 126 Wing and its five
squadrons. Within hours, work began on temporary airfields
in Normandy, so that 126 Wing could provide close support
for troops engaging the enemy. The strategy was to
continually move the airfields to locations right behind the
lines. Hastily improvised airfields were shrouded in clouds
of dust in dry weather, and flooded gumbo in wet -- and the
winter of 1944-45 was one of the worst on record. Ground
crews and pilots operated in appalling conditions, usually
ill-fed and ill-housed, but they kept on mounting operations
in all but the worst of weather. Being so close to the
action, they could be ordered to support an attack within
minutes of an observer's call for help.
As a senior intelligence officer, it was Mr. Berger's job to
debrief pilots when they returned from a mission. Some
Spitfires were used for high-altitude aerial photography,
and interpreting those images was another part of the job.
After Normandy, 126 Wing hopscotched from one temporary
airfield to another across northwestern Europe. Reaching
Belgium, as Mr. Berger later recounted, they were treated to
a full-blown party by the grateful burghers of Brussels. He
also visited Paris shortly after its liberation. "The
delirium with which the Parisians welcomed the Allies was
unbelievable. Champagne flowed, you couldn't spend a sou.
Invitations to dinner were countless, even though food was
scarce."
Not all of his memories were as joyful. After the wing
arrived in Germany, Mr. Berger and some friends borrowed a
Jeep to visit the just liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration
camp. He was shocked to find that, because of manpower
shortages, Hungarian guards who had been working for the SS
only days before were still guarding inmates. The sight of
unburied bodies, most them Jews, shocked him even more. "I
was sick to my stomach. Overcome with revulsion," he said in
his memoirs. "Those images stay fresh in my mind. I am
outraged and recall them vividly when I hear someone claim
the Holocaust never happened."
After V-E Day in May of 1945, Mr. Berger volunteered to
write a history of 126 Wing that was filled with astounding
statistics. From D-Day until victory, the squadrons lost 98
pilots and 131 Spitfires. But in 22,373 sorties (each time a
plane went into the air counted as a sortie), the pilots
destroyed 361 enemy aircraft, damaged 12 and had 156
unconfirmed "probable" kills. Along the way, they destroyed
or damaged 4,468 enemy vehicles, blew up or disabled 493
locomotives and 1,569 railcars, and cut 426 rail lines.
Monty Berger grew up in Montreal as the son of a rabbi from
seven generations of rabbis. The Berger family lived in the
neighbourhood of Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, where his father had
founded the Shaare Zion Synagogue. Young Monty went to West
Hill high school and then to McGill University, where he was
associate editor of the McGill Daily. He graduated in 1939,
then went to Columbia University in New York to earn a
master's degree in journalism.
His first job was at Quebec City's Chronicle-Telegraph, then
a daily English-language newspaper. He tried enlisting in
the RCAF but was turned down on medical grounds. He kept
trying and qualified as an army artillery officer, but he
was eager to go overseas. The air force seemed the fastest
way to do something. "My identity as a Jew ran deep. I felt
fully the sense of frustration seeing Hitler and the Nazis
go unchecked."
When an opening came up for a radar technician, he
volunteered, since it guaranteed that he would be overseas
within 13 weeks. Soon he was in England, working at a
British radar station. After a year, he saw an opening for
intelligence officers in the RCAF and was accepted right
away. "It demanded three qualifications: an ability to
gather and assemble information, to interview officers and
others, and get along with people." His journalism and
facility in French helped. "It was like what you do as a
reporter -- duck soup for me."
After the war, Mr. Berger worked at the Montreal Gazette. It
was a riotous time in the city, and most journalists joined
in the party. But not Mr. Berger. "In the world of the
hedonistic newsroom of the late 1940s, Monty Berger was a
rarity -- a serious man," said Bill Weintraub who chronicled
the period in such books as City Unique. "Later in life he
was the same -- an upstanding citizen."
Mr. Berger left the Gazette after two years to join the
public relations department of Canadian Industries Ltd.
(CIL). He did not stay long. "Someone at the company told
him that, as a Jew, he couldn't rise any further in the
company, so he decided to go out on his own," said Joy
Berger, his daughter.
For all that, CIL was his first client. At first, he thought
he would be a one-man business. But, within a few months of
opening up shop in 1960, he was swamped with work. The
company took on staff and expanded outside Montreal. At its
peak, he had offices in six Canadian cities and counted
among his clients McDonnell Douglas and Rolls-Royce Canada.
"His forte was organization. And he liked early morning
breakfast meetings near where he lived in Montreal," said
Bruce Findlay, who knew him from his days in public
relations in Montreal and Toronto.
Mr. Berger helped found the Canadian Public Relations
Society with Carl Reinke, a man he knew from the RCAF and
who was with him during the visit to Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
He was president of the Canadian Club of Montreal, on the
board of the Royal Victoria Hospital and president of Allied
Jewish Community Services. He was particularly keen on
supporting the Alliance for the Mentally Ill (his daughter
Ann had suffered from schizophrenia).
Mr. Berger also once considered politics. In 1965, he tried
to win the candidacy of the Liberal Party in the riding of
Mount Royal. He lost to Pierre Trudeau.
Monty Berger was born on July 26, 1918, in Quebec City. He
died on Nov. 27, 2006, of congestive heart failure in
Montreal. He was 88. He is survived by his wife, Jean
Soloway. He also leaves two children from an earlier
marriage, Joy and Eric. He was predeceased by his first
wife, Sonia Mindel, and by a daughter, Ann.