Shanghai Ghetto

At the end of the 1920s, most German Jews were loyal to Germany, assimilated and relatively prosperous. They served in the German army and contributed to every field of German science, business and culture. After the Nazis were elected to power in 1933, the state-sponsored anti-Semitic persecution such as the Nuremberg Laws (1935) and the Kristallnacht (1938) drove masses of German Jews to seek asylum abroad, with over 304,500 German Jews choosing to emigrate, 1933-1939.[4] Chaim Weizmann wrote in 1936, "The world seemed to be divided into two parts—those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter."[5]

The Evian Conference demonstrated that by the end of the 1930s it was almost impossible to find a destination open for Jewish immigration.

According to Dana Janklowicz-Mann:

Jewish men were being picked up and put into concentration camps. They were told you have X amount of time to leave—two weeks, a month—if you can find a country that will take you. Outside, their wives and friends were struggling to get a passport, a visa, anything to help them get out. But embassies were closing their doors all over, and countries, including the United States, were closing their borders. ... It started as a rumor in Vienna... ‘There's a place you can go where you don't need a visa. They have free entry.’ It just spread like fire and whoever could, went for it.[6]

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 counter-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.

Many in the Polish-Lithuanian Jewish community were saved by Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kaunas, Lithuania and Jan Zwartendijk, director of the Philips plants in Lithuania and part-time acting consul of the Dutch government-in-exile, 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.[7] Among those saved in the Shanghai Ghetto were leaders and students of Mir yeshiva, the only yeshiva in occupied Europe to survive the Holocaust.

1940 issued visa by consul Sugihara in Lithuania

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 banned and 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.[18][19]

As World War II intensified, the Nazis stepped up pressure on Japan to hand over the Shanghai Jews. While the Nazis regarded their Japanese allies as "Honorary Aryans", they were determined that the Final Solution to the Jewish Question also be applied to the Jews in Shanghai. 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 wir 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.[20]

"Residences, Businesses of City's Stateless Refugees Limited to Restricted Sector". (Shanghai Herald newspaper, February 18, 1943)

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.

During a trial in Germany relating to the Shanghai Ghetto, Fritz Wiedemann reported that Josef Meisinger had told him, that he got the order from Himmler to persuade the Japanese to take measures against the Jews. According to Wiedemann, Meisinger certainly could not have done this in form of a command. Since most Japanese were not anti-Semitic, Meisinger used their fear of espionage to achieve his goal. In fall 1942 he conferred with the head of the foreign section of the Japanese Home Ministry. Meisinger explained, that he had order from Berlin to give the Japanese authorities all names of "anti-Nazis" among the German community. He explained that "anti-Nazis" were primarily German Jews, of whom 20,000 had emigrated to Shanghai. These "anti-Nazis" were always "anti-Japanese" too. Later a subordinate, the interpreter of Meisinger, Karl Hamel, reported to CIC agents, that the Japanese, after some consideration, believed in this thesis. According to Hamel, this led to a veritable chase of "anti-Nazis" and to the internment of many people. In response, the Japanese demanded from Meisinger to compile a list of all "anti-Nazis." As his personal secretary later confirmed, this list had already been prepared by Meisinger since 1941. After consultation of General Müller in Berlin, it was handed over by Meisinger to the Japanese Home Ministry and to the Kenpeitai at the end of 1942. The list contained i. a. the names of all Jews with a German passport in Japan. For the Japanese this official document made clear, that in particular the large number of refugees, who had fled to Shanghai from 1937 onwards, represented the highest "risk potential". So the proclamation of a ghetto was just a logical consequence of Meisinger's intervention. This way Meisinger succeeded, despite the barely existing anti-Semitism of the Japanese, to achieve his goal: The internment of a large part of the Jews in the Japanese sphere of influence. Apparently for this "success" he was promoted Colonel of the police on February 6, 1943, despite the Richard Sorge affair. These informations were kept secret by US authorities and were not used in civil proceedings of ghetto inmates to gain redress. That is why, for example in the case of a woman who was interned in the ghetto, a German court came to the conclusion, that even though there was a probability that Meisinger tried to encourage the Japanese to take action against Jews, the establishment of the ghetto in Shanghai was "solely based on Japanese initiative".[21]

On November 15, 1942, the idea of a restricted ghetto was approved, which was after the visit of Shanghai by Josef Meisinger. On February 18, 1943, the Japanese authorities declared a "Designated Area for Stateless Refugees" and ordered those who arrived after 1937 to move their residences and businesses within it by May 18, three months later. The stateless refugees needed permission from the Japanese to dispose of their property; others needed permission to move into the ghetto.[2] The English version of the order read:

The designated area is bordered on the west by the line connecting Chaoufoong, Muirhead, and Dent Roads; on the east by Yangtzepoo Creek; on the south by the line connecting East Seward, Muirhead, and Wayside Roads; and on the North by the boundary of the International Settlement.[24]

While this area was not walled or surrounded with barbed wire, it was patrolled and a curfew enforced in its precincts. Food was rationed, and everyone needed passes to enter or leave the ghetto.[2]

Polish Jew's passport registration inside the ghetto (1943)

1942 Polish Association ID issued to a Jewish man living inside 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.[25]

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.[3]

The US air raids on Shanghai began in 1944. There were no bomb shelters in Hongkou as the water table was close to the surface. The most devastating raid started on July 17, 1945, and was the first attack on Hongkou. The bombings by the US 7th Air Force continued daily until the Atomic Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, which ended the air raids.

Refugees in the ghetto, improvised their own shelters, with one family surviving the bombing under a bed with a second mattress on top, mounted on two desks. Thirty-eight refugees and hundreds of Chinese were killed in the 17 July raid.[26]

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.[3] In addition, over 90% of the residents were unable to leave the ghetto until after the liberation in September 1945.