Shanghai after 1937
The
International Settlement of Shanghai was established by
the
Treaty of Nanking. Police, jurisdiction and passport
control were implemented by the foreign autonomous board.
Under the
Unequal Treaties between China and European countries,
visas were only required to book tickets departing from
Europe.
Following the
Battle of Shanghai in 1937, the city was
occupied by the army of
Imperial Japan, and the port began to allow entry
without visa or passport. By the time when most German Jews
arrived, two other Jewish communities had already settled in
the city: the wealthy
Baghdadi Jews, including the
Kadoorie and
Sassoon families, and the
Russian Jews. The last ones fled the
Russian Empire because of anti-Semitic pogroms pushed by
the tsarist regime and contre-revolutionary armies as well
as the class struggle manifested by the Bolsheviks. They had
formed the
Russian community in Harbin, then the
Russian community in Shanghai.
Chiune Sugihara, Tadeusz Romer,
and Ho Feng Shan
Many in the Polish-Lithuanian
Jewish community were saved by
Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in
Kaunas,
Lithuania. Sugihara is said to have cooperated with
Polish intelligence, as part a of bigger Japanese-Polish
cooperative plan. They
managed to flee across the vast territory of Russia by train
to
Vladivostok and then by boat to
Kobe in Japan. The refugees in number of 2,185 arrived
in Japan from August 1940 to June 1941.
Tadeusz Romer, the Polish ambassador in
Tokyo, had managed to get transit visas in Japan, asylum
visas to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Burma, immigration
certificates to Palestine, and immigrant visas to the United
States and some Latin American countries. Finally, Tadeusz
Romer arrived in
Shanghai on November 1, 1941, to continue the action for
Jewish refugees. Among
those saved in the Shanghai Ghetto were leaders and students
of
Mir yeshiva, the only
yeshiva in occupied Europe to survive
the Holocaust.
Similarly, thousands of
Austrian Jews were saved by the Chinese consul-general in
Vienna
Ho Feng Shan, who issued visas during 1938-1940 against
the orders of his superior the Chinese ambassador in Berlin,
Chen Jie.
Arrival of Ashkenazi Jews
The refugees who managed to
purchase tickets for luxurious Italian and Japanese cruise
steamships departing from
Genoa later described their three-week journey with
plenty of food and entertainment — between persecution in
Germany and squalid ghetto in Shanghai — as surreal. Some
passengers attempted to make unscheduled departures in
Egypt, hoping to smuggle themselves into the
British Mandate of Palestine.
The first German Jewish
refugees — twenty-six families, among them five well-known
physicians — had arrived in Shanghai already by November
1933. By the spring of 1934, there were reportedly eighty
refugee physicians, surgeons, and dentists in China. On
August 15, 1938, the first Jewish refugees from
Anschluss Austria arrived by Italian ship. Most of the
refugees arrived after
Kristallnacht. During the refugee flight to Shanghai
between November 1938 and June 1941, the total number of
arrivals by sea and land has been estimated at 1,374 in
1938; 12,089 in 1939; 1,988 in 1940; and 4,000 in 1941. In
1939-1940 Lloyd Triestino ran a sort of "ferry service"
between Italy and Shanghai, bringing in thousands of
refugees a month - Germans, Austrians, a few Czechs. Added
to this mix were approximately 1,000 Polish Jews in 1941.
Among these, all the faculty of the
Mir Yeshiva, some 400 in number, who with the outbreak
of World War II in 1939, fled from
Mir to
Vilna and then to
Keidan, Lithuania. In late 1940, they obtained visas
from
Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in
Kaunas, to travel from Keidan, then
Lithuanian SSR, via
Siberia and
Vladivostok to
Kobe, Japan.[10]
By November 1941 the Japanese moved this group and most of
others on to the Shanghai Ghetto in order to consolidate the
Jews under their control. Finally, a wave of more than
18,000
Ashkenazi Jews from
Germany,
Austria, and
Poland immigrated to Shanghai until the
Attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan in December 1941.
Much needed aid was provided
by International Committee for European Immigrants (IC),
established by
Victor Sassoon and
Paul Komor, a Hungarian businessman, and Committee for
the Assistance of European Jewish Refugees (CFA), founded by
Horace Kadoorie, under the direction of Michael Speelman.
These organizations prepared the housing in Hongkew (today
known as
Hongkou District), a relatively cheap district compared
with the
Shanghai International Settlement or the
Shanghai French Concession. They were accommodated in
shabby apartments and six camps in a former school. The
Japanese occupiers of Shanghai regarded German Jews as "stateless
persons".
In 1943, the occupying
Japanese army required these 18,000 Jews to relocate to a
3/4 square mile area of Shanghai's Hongkew district where
many lived in group homes called "Heime" or "Little Vienna".
Life in the Restricted Sector
for Stateless Refugees
The authorities were
unprepared for massive immigration and the arriving refugees
faced harsh conditions in the impoverished Hongkou District:
10 per room, near-starvation, disastrous sanitation and
scant employment.
The Baghdadis and later the
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)
provided some assistance with the housing and food problems.
Faced with language barriers, extreme poverty, rampant
disease and isolation, the refugees were able to make the
transition from being supported by welfare agencies to
establishing a functioning community. Jewish cultural life
flourished: schools were established, newspapers were
published, theaters produced plays, sports teams
participated in training and competitions and even cabarets
thrived.
The Ohel Moshe Synagogue
served as a religious center for the Russian Jewish
community since 1907 (currently the Shanghai Jewish Refugees
Museum, located at 62 Changyang Road, Hongkou District). In
April 1941, a modern Ashkenazic Jewish synagogue was built
(called the New Synagogue).
After Pearl Harbor (1941–1943)
After Japanese forces
attacked
Pearl Harbor, the wealthy
Baghdadi Jews (many of whom were British subjects) were
interned, and American charitable funds ceased. As
communication with the US was broken,
unemployment and
inflation intensified and times got harder for the
refugees.
The JDC liaison Laura
Margolis, who came to Shanghai, attempted to stabilize the
situation by getting permission from the Japanese
authorities to continue her fundraising effort, turning for
assistance to the Russian Jews who arrived before 1937 and
were exempt from the new restrictions.
Further restrictions (1943–1945)
As World War II intensified,
the Nazis stepped up pressure on Japan to hand over the
Shanghai Jews.
Warren Kozak describes the episode when the Japanese
military governor of the city sent for the Jewish community
leaders. The delegation included Amshinover
rabbi
Shimon Sholom Kalish. The Japanese governor was curious
and asked "Why do the Germans hate you so much?"
"Without hesitation and
knowing the fate of his community hung on his answer,
Reb Kalish told the translator (in
Yiddish): "Zugim weil mir senen orientalim —
Tell him [the Germans hate us] because we are
Orientals." The governor, whose face had been stern
throughout the confrontation, broke into a slight smile.
In spite of the military alliance, he did not accede to
the German demand and the Shanghai Jews were never
handed over."
According to another rabbi
who was present there, Reb Kalish' answer was "They hate us
because we are short and dark-haired." Orientalim was
not likely to have been said because the word is an Israeli
academic term in modern Hebrew, not a word in classical
Yiddish or Hebrew.
On November 15, 1942, the
idea of a restricted ghetto was approved. On February 18,
1943, the Japanese authorities declared a "Designated Area
for Stateless Refugees", ordering those who arrived after
1937 to move their residences and businesses into the
one-square-mile area within three months, by May 15. The
stateless refugees needed permission from the Japanese to
dispose of their property; others needed permission to move
into the ghetto. While the ghetto had no barbed wire or
walls, a
curfew was enforced, the area was patrolled, food was
rationed, and everyone needed passes to enter or leave the
ghetto.
According to Dr. David
Kranzler,
"Thus, about half of the
approximately 16,000 refugees, who had overcome great
obstacles and had found a means of livelihood and
residence outside the 'designated area' were forced to
leave their homes and businesses for a second time and
to relocate into a crowded, squalid area of less than
one square mile with its own population of an estimated
100,000 Chinese and 8,000 refugees."
Although a few temporary
passes were issued to work and to 16 students of St. Francis
Xavier College outside the ghetto, these were granted
arbitrarily and were severely curtailed after the first
year. But the fact that the Chinese did not leave the
Hongkou ghetto meant the Jews were not isolated.
Nevertheless economic conditions worsened; psychological
adjustment to ghettoization was difficult; the winter of
1943 was severe and hunger was widespread.
The US air raids on Shanghai
began in 1944. There were no bomb shelters in Hongkua as the
water table was close to the surface. The most devastating
raid started on July 17, 1945 and was the first attack on
Hongkua. According to Milan J. Voticky, who survived this
air raid with his family, under a bed with a second mattress
on top, mounted on two desks (an artificial bomb shelter to
prevent the family being buried alive),in this air raid 33
refugees were killed (Chinese death were never confirmed but
far more than refugees),To Mr. Voticky's knowledge
approximately 500 Chinese and Jewish refugees were wounded
(mostly Chinese), and 700 left homeless (again mostly
Chinese) by an attack on a Japanese radio transmitter in the
Hongkou district. The bombings by the US 7th Air Force
continued daily until the Atomic Bomb was dropped on
Hiroshima, which ended the air raids.
Some Jews of the Shanghai
ghetto took part in the
resistance movement. They participated in an underground
network to obtain and circulate information and were
involved in some minor sabotage and in providing assistance
to downed Allied aircrews. In addition, over 90% of the
residents were unable to leave the Ghetto until after the
liberation in August 1945.
After liberation
The ghetto was officially
liberated on September 3, 1945, after some delay to allow
Chiang Kai-shek's army to take political credit for the
liberation of Shanghai. With the establishment of the
State of Israel in 1948 and the fall of Chiang Kai-shek
in 1949, almost all the Shanghai ghetto Jews left. By 1957,
only 100 remained, and today only a few may still live
there.
The
Government of Israel bestowed the honor of the
Righteous Among the Nations to
Chiune Sugihara in 1985 and to
Ho Feng Shan in 2001.
Since the
establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and
China in 1992, the connection between the Jewish people
and
Shanghai has been recognised in various ways. In 2007,
the Israeli consulate-general in Shanghai donated 660,000
Yuan, provided by 26 Israeli companies, to community
projects in
Hongkou District, in recognition of the safe harbour
provided by the ghetto.[21]
The only Jewish monument in Shanghai is located at Houshan
Park (former Rabin Park) in Hongkou District.[22]
Partial list of notable refugees
in the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees
-
Aaron Avshalomov,
Russian composer.
-
Abba Berman,
Haredi rabbi,
Rosh yeshiva.
-
Charles K. Bliss,
whose Chinese experience inspired him to create
Blissymbols.
-
W. Michael Blumenthal,
served as the
U.S. Treasury Secretary.
-
Morris Cohen,
known by his nickname Two-Gun Cohen, he served as
bodyguard and aide-de-camp to
Sun Yat-sen, eventually becoming a Chinese general.
- Shaul Eisenberg, who
founded and ran the Eisenberg Group of Companies in
Israel.
- Gunther Gassenheimer,
rabbi,
Temple Israel, Alameda, CA.
-
Eduard Glass,
Austrian chess master.
- Eric Halpern, a
cofounder of the
Far Eastern Economic Review and its first editor.
-
Leo Hanin,
leader of Shanghai
Betar.
-
Otto Joachim,
German composer.
-
Shimon Sholom Kalish,
Hasidic rebbe of Amshinov–Otvotsk.
- Vivian Jeanette Kaplan,
Author of
Ten Green Bottles (book).
-
Yisrael Mendel Kaplan,
Haredi rabbi, served as Reb Mendel.
-
Yechezkel Levenstein,
Haredi rabbi, served as
Mashgiach Ruchani.
-
Francis Mankiewicz,
Canadian film director, screenwriter and producer.
-
Peter Max,
American pop artist.
-
Michael Medavoy,
a Hollywood executive at Columbia, Orion and TriStar
Pictures.
-
Rene Rivkin,
Australian financier.
-
Jakob Rosenfeld,
more commonly known as General Luo, who spent
nine years overseeing health care and who served as the
Minister of Health in the 1947
Provisional Communist Military Government of China
under
Mao Zedong.
-
Otto Schnepp,
professor at
University of Southern California
-
Chaim Leib Shmuelevitz,
Haredi rabbi, served as Rosh yeshiva of the
Mirrer Yeshiva in Shanghai (1941–1947), and in
Jerusalem (1965–1979).
-
John G. Stoessinger,
Distinguished Professor of Global Diplomacy at the
University of San Diego
-
Laurence Tribe,
professor,
Harvard Law School, Carl M. Loeb University
Professor
-
George Zames, a
control theorist and professor at
McGill University,
Montreal,
Quebec.