Former Shanghai Jewish Ghetto Tour / 上海隔都
The Shanghai Ghetto / 上海隔都, formally known as the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees / 无国籍难民限定地区 / 無國籍難民限定地區, was an area of approximately one square mile in the Hongkew district of Japanese-occupied Shanghai (the southern Hongkou and southwestern Yangpu districts of modern Shanghai). The area included the community around the Ohel Moshe Synagogue but about 23,000 of the city's Jewish refugees were restricted or relocated to the area from 1941 to 1945 by the Proclamation Concerning Restriction of Residence and Business of Stateless Refugees. It was one of the poorest and most crowded areas of the city. Local Jewish families and American Jewish charities aided them with shelter, food, and clothing. The Japanese authorities increasingly stepped up restrictions, but the ghetto was not walled, and the local Chinese residents, whose living conditions were often as bad, did not leave.
The first German Jewish refugees—twenty-six families, among them five well-known physicians—had already arrived in Shanghai 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. 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.
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).
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 Hongkou, a relatively cheap suburb 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 Hongkou district where many lived in group homes called Heime or Little Vienna.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Former Shanghai Jewish Ghetto Tour
The Shanghai Ghetto / 上海隔都, formally known as the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees / 无国籍难民限定地区 / 無國籍難民限定地區, was an area of approximately one square mile in the Hongkew district of Japanese-occupied Shanghai (the southern Hongkou and southwestern Yangpu districts of modern Shanghai). The area included the community around the Ohel Moshe Synagogue but about 23,000 of the city's Jewish refugees were restricted or relocated to the area from 1941 to 1945 by the Proclamation Concerning Restriction of Residence and Business of Stateless Refugees. It was one of the poorest and most crowded areas of the city. Local Jewish families and American Jewish charities aided them with shelter, food, and clothing. The Japanese authorities increasingly stepped up restrictions, but the ghetto was not walled, and the local Chinese residents, whose living conditions were often as bad, did not leave.
The first German Jewish refugees—twenty-six families, among them five well-known physicians—had already arrived in Shanghai 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. 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.
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).
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 Hongkou, a relatively cheap suburb 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 Hongkou district where many lived in group homes called Heime or Little Vienna.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.