Forgotten Exodus: The Remarkable Journey of 17,000 Jews to Shanghai Amidst the Holocaust
Many stories of the Shoa are now well known, but there are still some that lie largely forgotten and gathering dust. Perhaps these stories were once deemed less tragic but are no less important and fascinating. Perhaps the story of the 17,000 Jews feeling Europe for China, as told by Steve Hochstadt in Exodus to Shanghai, is one such story.
In the early 1930s, the Nazi authorities supported Jewish emigration even to the extent that a ticket assuring passage abroad was mighty enough to secure a release from a concentration camp. However, such tickets and the necessary visas were far from easy to obtain. There were quotas. Tiny quotas. Austrian immigration to the United States was limited to about 785 people a year, which was hardly sufficient for the 200,000-strong Jewish population in Austria.
Steuerunbedenklichkeitserklärung
‘First, you have to get what they called a Steuerunbedenklichkeitserklärung, which means that you didn’t owe any taxes to the government, the previous government or this government.’
One of the survivors in the book mentioned this and the word Steuerunbedenklichkeitserklärung really struck me as sort of an evil symbol for the situation. It is long, unnecessarily complicated and no one really understands how or why it needs to exist. Similarly, it seemed as if the path out is clear and perhaps many of us tell ourselves that we’d surely have left if facing such a situation, but it turns out it was far more difficult. Like the word itself, emigration was complicated as piles upon piles of documents needed to be provided to every individual embassy translated into the language of the country one wished to go to and that was not only expensive but oftentimes futile since there were more people trying to leave than the quotas allowed. At the same time, time was running out.
‘The Christian population, I would say the antisemitic population, wanted to better themselves, so they knocked on Jewish people’s doors, threw the occupants out, and moved in. And if the people said, “Where should I go?” “There’s the Danube, go into the Danube.” Meaning, “Kill yourself, go drown yourself, do whatever you want, but you’re not human. We are now the master race, and we want that apartment, or that house, or that residence, whatever it is.”’
In Shanghai
Shanghai was the only place left that didn’t require visas for most of the period. You could simply saunter off the boat and make yourself at home. No questions asked. It was a capitalist paradise ruled and dominated by the British, Americans and the French. Interestingly, the Jews fleeing Europe were not the first Jews who found a safe haven in Shanghai. There had been Baghdadi Jewish families who fled Ottoman conscription and refugees from Russia numbering in thousands. The arrivals in the late 30s were quite different though. Most people who managed to secure passage to Shanghai were salesmen, doctors, lawyers and store owners. Hardly trades suited to starting a new life in a completely exotic environment from scratch.
Yet, they managed to reinvent themselves in their new homes. Some were finally forced to contemplate their own Jewishness and recreated the cultured, secular Ashkenazi Judaism of central Europe.
‘These refugees saw no contradiction between Jewish and German culture. Within a few months of landing, the Austrians created a café life on the streets of Hongkou.’
The Japanese
Shanghai would eventually come under the control of the Japanese, but interestingly the Japanese displayed little interest in curtailing Jewish immigration and did not share the antisemitism of their Nazi allies. Nazi emissaries continued to pressure the Japanese to get rid of the Jewish population, but the only answer they got from the Japanese was procrastination. The Western business, on the other hand, also didn’t provide much support, and in the end, it was they who were interned by the Japanese as members of enemy nations. Eventually, Jewish residency was restricted to one particular area as well and property rights were no more espoused by the Japanese than the Nazis, but overall, the Jewish émigrés could go on living unhindered under Japanese rule. Nonetheless, the end of the war brought exhilaration as well as more uncertainty.
‘Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government expressed hostile attitudes toward the Jewish refugee community, and Mao’s Communists were an unknown threat.’
Fodder for thought
My reactions to the survivor accounts ranged from surprise to shock but the following excerpts were those that gave me a pause for thought the most. I hope they become as much of a fodder for thought for you as they have been for me.
‘In Shanghai, we had some of the very religious Jews from Poland there, the pious in the black hats. I remember they lived right across the lane from us. We didn’t associate with them at all or nor would they with us. As far as they were concerned, we weren’t even Jewish.‘
One Am Yisrael? Why can’t differences be overcome even in the midst of such adversities? Perhaps we should take modern divisions less lightly since even the darkest of times were not dark enough to overcome the us vs them.
‘Pearl Harbor came and, lo and behold, the house that had the WC was a place that the Japanese liked very much and they confiscated it.’
‘Her name was Bella. We had to take a name out of a list from Hitler, you know, because we were still German citizens. We were the only dumb ones who did that. My friends, they just took any name they wanted and didn’t even go to the German Consulate and registered her.‘
One family lost their house to the Nazis when it was taken by them but bought another in Shanghai. Naturally, it too was seized when the Japanese established direct control over the city after Pearl Harbor. You lose one house and the first thing you do once you earn some money again is to spend it on another one? Another family proceeded to register their newborn with the German embassy while in Shanghai. You know that the state hates you, and yet you go out of your way to obey its commands? Why? Both actions seem absurd in hindsight. Perhaps it shows how strongly we hold on to things. It’s nearly impossible to let go of what you know, be it the belief in property as security or the impulse to be a good citizen.
Finally, there’s some good advice from those who have perhaps suffered and experienced more than ourselves:
‘It’s as we say, “Schwer zu sein a Jid,” it’s not easy to be a Jew. But I believe it’s much easier to be a Jew if you want to be a Jew, than if you don’t want to be a Jew.’
‘Don’t ever blame the condition, blame yourself. Because under the most impossible conditions, some people will make it one way or another.’
Sources
- German and Austrian Jewish Refugees in Shanghai | Holocaust Encyclopedia (ushmm.org)
- Hochstadt, S. (2012) Exodus to Shanghai, Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137006721.
- or buy at Amazon
