Wartime Shanghai and the Jewish Refugees from Central Europe

Wartime Shanghai and the Jewish Refugees from Central Europe PDF Author: Irene Eber
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110268183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
The study discusses the history of the Jewish refugees within the Shanghai setting and its relationship to the two established Jewish communities, the Sephardi and Russian Jews. Attention is also focused on the cultural life of the refugees who used both German and Yiddish, and on their attempts to cope under Japanese occupation after the outbreak of the Pacific War. Differences of identity existed between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, religious and secular, aside from linguistic and cultural differences. The study aims to understand the exile condition of the refugees and their amazing efforts to create a semblance of cultural life in a strange new world.

Wartime Shanghai and the Jewish Refugees from Central Europe

Wartime Shanghai and the Jewish Refugees from Central Europe PDF Author: Irene Eber
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110268183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
The study discusses the history of the Jewish refugees within the Shanghai setting and its relationship to the two established Jewish communities, the Sephardi and Russian Jews. Attention is also focused on the cultural life of the refugees who used both German and Yiddish, and on their attempts to cope under Japanese occupation after the outbreak of the Pacific War. Differences of identity existed between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, religious and secular, aside from linguistic and cultural differences. The study aims to understand the exile condition of the refugees and their amazing efforts to create a semblance of cultural life in a strange new world.

Japanese, Nazis & Jews

Japanese, Nazis & Jews PDF Author: David Kranzler
Publisher: Sifria Distributors
ISBN:
Category : Immigrants
Languages : en
Pages : 680

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Book Description


Voices from Shanghai

Voices from Shanghai PDF Author:
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226181685
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
When Hitler came to power and the German army began to sweep through Europe, almost 20,000 Jewish refugees fled to Shanghai. A remarkable collection of the letters, diary entries, poems, and short stories composed by these refugees in the years after they landed in China, Voices from Shanghai fills a gap in our historical understanding of what happened to so many Jews who were forced to board the first ship bound for anywhere. Once they arrived, the refugees learned to navigate the various languages, belief systems, and ethnic traditions they encountered in an already booming international city, and faced challenges within their own community based on disparities in socioeconomic status, levels of religious observance, urban or rural origin, and philosophical differences. Recovered from archives, private collections, and now-defunct newspapers, these fascinating accounts make their English-languge debut in this volume. A rich new take on Holocaust literature, Voices from Shanghai reveals how refugees attempted to pursue a life of creativity despite the hardships of exile.

Shanghai Sanctuary

Shanghai Sanctuary PDF Author: Bei Gao
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199311544
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
When the world closed its borders to desperate Jews fleeing Europe during World War II, Shanghai became an unexpected last haven for the refugees. An open port that could be entered without visas, this unique city under Western and Japanese control sheltered tens of thousands of Jews. Shanghai Sanctuary is the first major study to examine the Chinese Nationalist government's policy towards the "Jewish issue" as well as the most thorough analysis of how this issue played into Japanese diplomacy. Why did Shanghai's German-allied Japanese occupiers permit this influx of Jewish refugees? Gao illuminates how the refugees' position complicated the relationships between China, Japan, Germany, and the United States before and during World War II. She thereby reveals a great deal about the Great Powers' national priorities, their international agendas, and their perceptions of the global balance of power. Drawing from both Chinese and Japanese archival sources that no Western scholar has been able to fully use before, Gao tells a rich story about the politics and personalities that brought Jewish refugees into Shanghai. This story, far from being a mere sidebar to the history of modern China and Japan, captures a critical moment when opportunistic authorities in both countries used the incoming Jewish refugees as a tool to win international financial and political support in their war against one another. Shanghai Sanctuary underlines the extent of Holocaust's global repercussions. In the process, the book sheds new light on the intricacies of wartime diplomacy and the far-reaching human consequences of the twentieth century's most documented conflict.

Strange Haven

Strange Haven PDF Author: Sigmund Tobias
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252024535
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
The author, part of the Jewish refugee community in Shanghai, tells of his experiences growing up in the ghetto under Japanese occupation.

Shanghai Refuge

Shanghai Refuge PDF Author: Ernest G. Heppner
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803272811
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The unlikely refuge of Shanghai, the only city in the world that did not require a visa, was buffeted by the struggle between European imperialism, Japanese aggression, and Chinese nationalism. Ernest G. Heppner's compelling testimony is a brilliant account of this little-known haven. Although Heppner was a member of a privileged middle-class Jewish family, he suffered from the constant anti-Semitic undercurrent in his surroundings. The devastation of "Crystal Night" in November 1938, however, introduced a new level of Nazi horror and ended his comfortable world overnight. Heppner and his mother used the family's resources to escape to Shanghai. Heppner was taken aback by experiences on the ocean liner that transported the refugees to Shanghai: he was embarrassed and confounded when Egyptian Jews offered worn clothing to the Jewish passengers, he resented the edicts against Jewish passengers disembarking in any ports on the way, and he was unprepared for the poverty and cultural dislocation of the great city of Shanghai. Nevertheless, Heppner was self-reliant, energetic, and clever, and his story of finding niches for his skills that enabled him to survive in a precarious fashion is a tribute to human endurance. In 1945, after the liberation of China, Heppner found a responsible position with the American forces there. He and his wife, whom he had met and married in the ghetto, arrived in the United States in 1947 with only eleven dollars but boundless hope and energy. Heppner's account of the Shanghai ghetto is as vivid to him now as it was then. His admiration for his new country and his later success in business do not, however, obscure for him the shameful failure of the Allies to furnish a refuge for Jews before, during, and after the war.

Someday We Will Fly

Someday We Will Fly PDF Author: Rachel DeWoskin
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0670014966
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
From the author of Blind, a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story set during World War II in Shanghai, one of the only places Jews without visas could find refuge. Warsaw, Poland. The year is 1940 and Lillia is fifteen when her mother, Alenka, disappears and her father flees with Lillia and her younger sister, Naomi, to Shanghai, one of the few places that will accept Jews without visas. There they struggle to make a life; they have no money, there is little work, no decent place to live, a culture that doesn't understand them. And always the worry about Alenka. How will she find them? Is she still alive? Meanwhile Lillia is growing up, trying to care for Naomi, whose development is frighteningly slow, in part from malnourishment. Lillia finds an outlet for her artistic talent by making puppets, remembering the happy days in Warsaw when her family was circus performers. She attends school sporadically, makes friends with Wei, a Chinese boy, and finds work as a performer at a "gentlemen's club" without her father's knowledge. But meanwhile the conflict grows more intense as the Americans declare war and the Japanese force the Americans in Shanghai into camps. More bombing, more death. Can they survive, caught in the crossfire?

A Century of Jewish Life in Shanghai

A Century of Jewish Life in Shanghai PDF Author: Steve Hochstadt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781644691311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
For a century, Jews were an unmistakable and prominent feature of Shanghai life. Three waves of Jews, representing three religious and ethnic communities, landed in Shanghai, remained separate for decades, but faced the calamity of World War II and ultimate dissolution together.

Port of Last Resort

Port of Last Resort PDF Author: Marcia Reynders Ristaino
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804750233
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
This book examines two large and generally overlooked diaspora communities, one Jewish, the other Slavic, who found refuge in Shanghai during the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century.

Flight and Rescue

Flight and Rescue PDF Author: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The story of more than 2,000 Polish Jewish refugees who fled across the Soviet Union to Japan, where they awaited entrance visas to the United States and elsewhere.