Jewish Shanghai: An Authentic Discovery

My friend Vicki Mendelson recently spent 2 weeks in China and discovered alot.I invite you to read her story. She is also a terrific travel agent and someone that I recommend highly. Her contact information is at the bottom of this post.

Jewish Shanghai: An Authentic Discovery

  I recently spent two weeks traveling on an educational trip to China with the most knowledgeable guide I have ever met; Bill Hurst. The trip began in Beijing, a fascinating city that has enchanted the imagination of visitors for centuries. We began in the Forbidden City, the residence of emperors and their families for over five hundred years. Next, we went to the Temple of Heaven which depicted an exquisite example of Chinese wooden buildings.  An amusing legend about the temple is that a rivalry between two concubines ended with one drowning the other in a well.  The well is remarkably preserved! We ended our journey in Beijing with a trip to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. The stunning views of the countryside and this sections solitary setting kindled the astounding achievement of Chinese civilization.

 

 We continued onto one of the greatest archeological sites, the Terra-Cotta Warriors in Xian; and spent several days on a cruise down the Yangzi passing through three dramatic gorge areas.  This ended with another amazing feat of Chinese engineering, the mile and a quarter Three Rivers Gorge Dam.

 

We were now in Shanghai, a city of winding alleys fronted by dense concentrations of row housing. Shanghai also has an urban development side which continues to attract the talents of famous architects and designers. On our last day in Shanghai, I became engaged in a conversation on Chinese ancestral worship which then led to a discussion of my own practice and beliefs.

 

As someone who attended yeshiva and has traveled throughout Israel, I never connected China and the Jewish people. When I think about the Holocaust and our Jewish allies, I think of Spain, France, Poland, Italy, Portugal and even Denmark.  Little did I know that throughout history and during WW II, 20,000 Jews took refuge in Shanghai? 

 

Shanghai, now China’s largest city had three waves of Jewish immigration. The first began in 1845, when David Sassoon, an Iraqi Jew living in India moved his family business to Shanghai.  He was joined by two other prominent Baghdad Jews, Elly Kadoorie and Silas Hardoon.

 

 Russian Jews began to flee oppression and arrived in Shanghai after the revolution. Beginning in the 1930s, some 30,000 refugees from Nazi Europe arrived as other countries were closing their doors to the Jews. Shanghai an “open city” allowed immigration without a passport or visa. All that was required to enter the country was a cruise ship ticket. 

 

  I learned that the Japanese occupied Shanghai in WWII, but refused the Nazi orders to deport or exterminate the city’s Jews.  The Jewish refugees were confined to what became known as the Hongkou Ghetto.  Those who had jobs outside the ghetto could continue working. Aid was sent in by the Iraqi and Russian Jewish communities along with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The poverty was extreme and disease was rampant, but the Jews living in the Shanghai were protected from the genocide during the holocaust.

 

In 2001, Dvir Bar Gal, an Israeli documentary film maker discovered this history during a tour of Shanghai. There were four cemeteries that once served the city’s Jewish community which all disappeared in the late 1960s during China’s Cultural Revolution.  Bar Gal was told that a local antique dealer was selling two Jewish tombstones from one of the abandoned cemeteries. He purchased one and found out the other one had been sold.  This led to an all consuming project for Bar Gal, who has now devoted his last eight years working with excavation teams. 

Stones have been found in villages outside the city. Some have been used as stepping stones, other used to build bridges or thrown into the rivers. In many instances, stones have been purchased from the local villagers who have claimed to own them.  While many inscriptions have worn away, many chronicle the history of Jewish Shanghai. To date, Bar Gal has 60 headstones in storage facilities as he patiently awaits the government’s permission to build a memorial commemorating the Jewish people’s will to survive.

 

 

The memorial will be housed in a small park in the middle of the former ghetto. The park already has a granite marker commemorating the Jews that lived there, and is close to the newly restored Ohel Moshe Synagogue.

 

As Bar Gal awaits the government’s approval, he continues to run tours of the area. Many of his tourists have been former ghetto residents and their descendants; while the street names have changed, the numbers on the old buildings have not.

 

Today, the Jewish community of Shanghai has over 600 Jews. The population is expected to grow at around 30% annually as China’s open door policy makes it attractive to international trade and investment.  Patiently, the Jewish people of Shanghai a wait the day for the Hongkou area to again become the epicenter of Jewish life.

 

For more information on a trip to China and the Shanghai Ghetto, call Vicki Mendelson at Pisa Brothers Travel 212 265 8420 ext 214 or write to [email protected].