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Holocaust Museum LA Exhibit Spotlights Shanghai’s Jewish Refugees

The exhibit spotlights the more than 20,000 stateless Jews that fled Europe for Shanghai, China between 1933 and 1941.
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May 12, 2022
The new exhibit includes informative panels, original artifacts and photographs. Photo by Tamara Leigh Photography

When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, George Kolber’s Viennese Jewish grandparents, Josef and Eva Kolber, knew they had to leave Europe. Where they went, however, was a bit unusual. 

The two left Austria for Shanghai. Kolber’s grandmother took a land route using the Trans-Siberian Railroad while his grandfather traveled by sea. Eva’s predisposition for seasickness was likely the reason she chose to go the long distance by land, Kolber said, during an April 22 lecture at the Holocaust Museum Los Angeles.

Kolber spoke at the museum in advance of the opening of its new exhibition, “Hidden History: Recounting the Shanghai Jewish Story.”

The Kolbers’ journey is one of five family stories highlighted in the exhibit, which opened April 24 and runs through mid-August. The exhibit spotlights the more than 20,000 stateless Jews that fled Europe for Shanghai, China between 1933 and 1941 while focusing on the stories of the Medavoy, Maimann, Kolber, Friedmann and Millett families.

On display are family artifacts, including postcards from concentration camps, a ketubah written in Chinese and a tallit embroidered with both the Magen David and a wreath of plum blossoms, which are symbolic of resilience and perseverance in Chinese culture. 

On display are family artifacts, including postcards from concentration camps, a ketubah written in Chinese and a tallit embroidered with both the Magen David and a wreath of plum blossoms, which are symbolic of resilience and perseverance in Chinese culture. 

Twin sisters Monika White (left) and Gitta Morris, who were born in Shanghai during the war. Photo by Tamara Leigh Photography

Also featured is a blue yarmulke on loan from the Skirball Cultural Center – the Chinese believe blue represents advancement and immortality – as well as photographs of the Shanghai Jewish community taken by celebrated photojournalist Arthur Rothstein. In 1946, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration assigned Rothstein with documenting the lives of displaced Holocaust survivors in the Hongkew ghetto in Shanghai. 

The exhibition was originally supposed to open in 2020 but COVID-19 forced its postponement. Ultimately, the timing of the exhibit opening was fortuitous, because the story of European-Jewish refugees fleeing for their lives was particularly relevant given current events in Ukraine, Jordanna Gessler, vice president of education and exhibits at Holocaust Museum LA, said.

In the 1930s, Shanghai became an unexpected refuge for German and Austrian Jews because, until 1939, no visas were required for entering Shanghai. When the Japanese occupied Shanghai, in 1941, they forced the Jews there into Hongkew, a district of Shanghai. The area became known as the “Shanghai Ghetto.”

Still, while life for Jews in Shanghai was hard, those Jews who fled to Shanghai fared better than those who remained behind in Europe, Kolber said. In fact, the majority of Jews in Shanghai survived the Holocaust. While the Jewish population in Shanghai peaked around 20,000, today there are about 2,000 Jews remaining in Shanghai.

Prior to the Holocaust, a small population of Jews already lived in Shanghai, including 1,000 Sephardic Jews who arrived from Iraq in the mid-1800s.

The Jewish refugees who fled Europe for China during the Holocaust were not the first Jews in Shanghai. Prior to the Holocaust, a small population of Jews already lived in Shanghai, including 1,000 Sephardic Jews who arrived from Iraq in the mid-1800s as well as a few thousand Ashkenazi Jews who had fled the pogroms of Russia. 

The family of Michael Medavoy was among those in Shanghai before the war. Born in Shanghai in 1941, Medavoy went on to become a successful Hollywood film producer. He took part in the April 24 panel marking the opening of the exhibition, along with Congressman Adam Schiff and Ted Lieu. 

On April 22, the museum held an exhibition preview for museum board members and family whose artifacts were in it. In attendance were 82-year-old Monika White and her twin sister, Gitta Morris. Child survivors of the Holocaust, their parents fled to China from Germany in 1938, traveling to Shanghai by ship from Berlin. The family lived in Hongkew, sharing a one-room apartment with four families. 

“We remember being hungry,” White said. “We remember being scared.”

The twin sisters remained in the Chinese city until they were eight-years-old, then came with their father to the United States with the help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The family settled in Minneapolis, where there was a school for the girls, a job for their father and a house for the family.

For the twins, seeing the story of Shanghai’s Jewish refugees told in the exhibition was gratifying if for no other reason that people generally are not aware about Jews escaping to Shanghai during the war.

“Most of the Holocaust stories are about Europe and concentration camps,” White said. “Ours is a little bit different.”

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