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A celebration of Chinese and Jewish history
A celebration of Chinese and Jewish history Crossroads: Shanghai and the Jews of China An exhibition at the Sydney Jewish Museum, Sydney, Australia, showing until March 17, 2002.
By the 1930s, many of the foreign residents included Sephardic (Oriental) Jews from Iraq and India. The first Sephardim had settled in Shanghai n 1938, few countries offered a dynamic city of grand buildings and as early as the 11th century when refuge to Jewish people fleeing nightclubs. People lived in extremes the city was a trading post on the persecution in Europe. Those of wealth and poverty, opium dens Silk Route. The exhibition includes who had not left before Kristallnacht were legalised, and gangsters and a drawing of the Kaifeng Synagogue, found that exit visas were near warlords flourished. which was established in 1163 on impossible to come by. One the banks of the Yellow exception was the Chinese port River. During the 1700s, the of Shanghai; already home to population declined, but a 25 000 Jews, the city welcomed community was re-established 18 000 European refugees. in the 1840s. Other Jews in The newly invigorated Jewish Shanghai had come from the community set about recreating Russian enclave of Harbin, their European world in a city in Manchuria; they migrated remarkably lacking in antito Shanghai to escape the Semitism. After the war, 2500 anti-Semitism that prevailed of those refugees made their in Tsarist Russia. More Jewish way to Australia, and their refugees arrived in Shanghai experiences are documented after the Bolshevik revolution in an exhibition at the Sydney of 1917, and after the Japanese Foochou Road, the “Piccadilly” of Shanghai Jewish Museum. invasion of Manchuria in 1933. The refugees were able to The newly invigorated Jewish travel to Shanghai thanks to community of Shanghai set three ambassadors. The Chinese about recreating their European consul in Vienna, Dr Fen Shan world. The exhibition includes Ho, issued exit visas to any Jew a reconstruction of the café who requested them for passage Barcelona, which features a to that city. Polish Jews who had menu of European Jewish fled to Lithuania were issued specialities. In an emerging visas to Kobe by the Japanese public sphere, newspapers were consul in Lithuania, Chiune published, schools were estabSugihara, and to Dutch Curacao lished, an orchestra was formed, by the Dutch Honorary Consul, and a new synagogue was built. Jan Zwartendijk. On display Multicultural Shanghai was in the exhibition are passports unique for the degree of that have these precious visas, tolerance afforded to minorities. with which the refugees were The absence of anti-Semitism able to travel through Russia on the part of the Chinese and eventually arrive in meant that Jewish society could Shanghai, where they found flourish. a dynamic, multicultural city The exhibition features many that housed 100 000 foreign treasures brought to Australia residents. by the immigrants, including After Britain’s victory in the a Russian samovar, musical Opium Wars of 1839–42, instruments, mah jong sets, and Shanghai received a flood of Chinese wedding certificates; foreign settlers. The city was also displayed is a menorah divided into foreign concessions found recently at the city’s that acted as virtual colonies Fang Bang Lu market. The free from Chinese taxes and most compelling exhibits are political interference. Photothe historical photographs; by graphs from this period show a Detail from wedding certificate of Gerty and Willy Jellinek all accounts the Chinese and Sydney Jewish Museum
Sydney Jewish Museum
I
THE LANCET • Vol 359 • February 23, 2002 • www.thelancet.com
715
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.
DISSECTING ROOM
Jewish communities led more or less separate lives, but the photographs do portray a dynamic city that integrated Chinese and European cultures. After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, Japan controlled Shanghai. Jews were initially treated the same as other non-Chinese, but in February, 1943, Colonel Josef Meisinger, Gestapo Chief in East Asia (also known as the Butcher of Warsaw), arrived in Shanghai. He attempted to persuade the Japanese military command to exterminate Shanghai’s Jews, but they resisted. Under pressure they established a ghetto in the district of Hongkew where all stateless refugees who arrived after 1937 were compelled to live.
But the inhabitants were able to continue running businesses outside the ghetto and to come and go more or less as they wished. The Japanese Vice-Consul in Shanghai, Mitsugi Shibata, warned Jewish community leaders of Meisinger’s intentions, actions for which he was imprisoned and later deported to Tokyo. The Jewish community’s fortunes changed when Japan lost the war. Chiang Kai Shek announced that stateless refugees would be expelled. For most people repatriation was not an option and the future was uncertain. It is disturbing to remember that after World War II, Jewish refugees were unwelcome nearly everywhere. The first major exodus to Australia took
place in 1946, but officials halted the flow in mid-1947 when a report from the Australian Consul-General in Shanghai, quoted in the exhibition, described the city’s Jews as people with “pasts unknown and unspeakable, their intentions obscure”. Nonetheless, those Jews carrying British passports had no trouble travelling to Australia. At a time when refugees continue to be regarded with suspicion and fear, this exhibition celebrates the tolerance exemplified in multicultural Shanghai. It also extols the contribution those refugees have gone on to make as Australian citizens. Kirstie Archer e-mail: [email protected]
Tools of the trade The Smith-Clarke Respirator he iron lung, or cabinet respicollar. It was witnessing the distress rator, devised in 1929, was a caused by this procedure that seems life-saving device. But early to have prompted Smith-Clarke to models were alarming and uncomfortimprove the design. able for patients, inconvenient for Working initially in a disused airnurses, and expensive. Credit for raid shelter, he added large windows, inventing the iron lung must go to strip lighting (which also served as Philip Drinker of Harvard University, heating), alarms, a foot-rest, tilting USA, but it was the chairman of a —had turned car production lines at mechanism, and wheels. SmithWarwickshire Hospital Management Cowley, Oxford, UK, over to making Clarke began to experiment with a Committee in the UK who, in the Both respirators, and offered one free to rubber collar that split in half to 1950s, made this device vastly more any hospital in the British Empire. admit the patient’s head. Eventually, user-friendly. Captain he devised an innovaG T Smith-Clarke tive way of getting (1884–1960) became patients in and out: Rights were not granted to include this image chairman of Coventry the entire top of the in electronic media. Please refer to the printed Group HMC in 1951, respirator was hinged after retiring from the and opened upwards, journal. Alvis Motor Company. making the iron lung He had already imlook “like a somewhat proved existing medical special bed”, with “no devices, and his work resemblance, fancied or on iron lungs resulted real, to a coffin”. His in a new model that respirator was soon eventually replaced dubbed the “alligator”. most of the older types Design solutions used in the UK. from the motor indusDrinker’s lung had try were freely borbeen tank-like huge, rowed. Smith-Clarke heavy, and made of wanted the hinged tops metal. Its development made of fibreglass, just was funded in part Smith-Clarke adult cabinet respirator with separate pump unit (1953) coming into use for car by the new gas and bodies. This material electricity companies in the USA. Both respirators undoubtedly saved proved too expensive, but another piece Alarmed at the effect of fatal accidents the lives of many people with polio, but of technology transferred more successon sales, these companies hoped for a their shape and wooden construction fully: the cover for the intravenous resuscitation device (which, of course, gave them an unfortunate resemblance line port in his new iron lung closely the iron lung was not). In 1952, there to coffins. They had other drawbacks resembled the quick-release petrol caps were 30 Drinker respirators in the UK, too—only two small nursing ports at used in Monza-type racing cars. but nearly 700 Both iron lungs—a the head end, and no heating, lighting, Ghislaine Lawrence modification designed in Australia in or alarm system. And, as with other Clinical Medicine, The Science Museum, 1938. In 1939, Lord Nuffield— iron lungs, the patient’s head had to be London SW7 2DD, UK philanthropic owner of Morris Motors squeezed through the air-tight rubber Science Museum/Science and Society Picture Library
T
716
THE LANCET • Vol 359 • February 23, 2002 • www.thelancet.com
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.
By the 1930s, many of the foreign residents included Sephardic (Oriental) Jews from Iraq and India. The first Sephardim had settled in Shanghai n 1938, few countries offered a dynamic city of grand buildings and as early as the 11th century when refuge to Jewish people fleeing nightclubs. People lived in extremes the city was a trading post on the persecution in Europe. Those of wealth and poverty, opium dens Silk Route. The exhibition includes who had not left before Kristallnacht were legalised, and gangsters and a drawing of the Kaifeng Synagogue, found that exit visas were near warlords flourished. which was established in 1163 on impossible to come by. One the banks of the Yellow exception was the Chinese port River. During the 1700s, the of Shanghai; already home to population declined, but a 25 000 Jews, the city welcomed community was re-established 18 000 European refugees. in the 1840s. Other Jews in The newly invigorated Jewish Shanghai had come from the community set about recreating Russian enclave of Harbin, their European world in a city in Manchuria; they migrated remarkably lacking in antito Shanghai to escape the Semitism. After the war, 2500 anti-Semitism that prevailed of those refugees made their in Tsarist Russia. More Jewish way to Australia, and their refugees arrived in Shanghai experiences are documented after the Bolshevik revolution in an exhibition at the Sydney of 1917, and after the Japanese Foochou Road, the “Piccadilly” of Shanghai Jewish Museum. invasion of Manchuria in 1933. The refugees were able to The newly invigorated Jewish travel to Shanghai thanks to community of Shanghai set three ambassadors. The Chinese about recreating their European consul in Vienna, Dr Fen Shan world. The exhibition includes Ho, issued exit visas to any Jew a reconstruction of the café who requested them for passage Barcelona, which features a to that city. Polish Jews who had menu of European Jewish fled to Lithuania were issued specialities. In an emerging visas to Kobe by the Japanese public sphere, newspapers were consul in Lithuania, Chiune published, schools were estabSugihara, and to Dutch Curacao lished, an orchestra was formed, by the Dutch Honorary Consul, and a new synagogue was built. Jan Zwartendijk. On display Multicultural Shanghai was in the exhibition are passports unique for the degree of that have these precious visas, tolerance afforded to minorities. with which the refugees were The absence of anti-Semitism able to travel through Russia on the part of the Chinese and eventually arrive in meant that Jewish society could Shanghai, where they found flourish. a dynamic, multicultural city The exhibition features many that housed 100 000 foreign treasures brought to Australia residents. by the immigrants, including After Britain’s victory in the a Russian samovar, musical Opium Wars of 1839–42, instruments, mah jong sets, and Shanghai received a flood of Chinese wedding certificates; foreign settlers. The city was also displayed is a menorah divided into foreign concessions found recently at the city’s that acted as virtual colonies Fang Bang Lu market. The free from Chinese taxes and most compelling exhibits are political interference. Photothe historical photographs; by graphs from this period show a Detail from wedding certificate of Gerty and Willy Jellinek all accounts the Chinese and Sydney Jewish Museum
Sydney Jewish Museum
I
THE LANCET • Vol 359 • February 23, 2002 • www.thelancet.com
715
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.
DISSECTING ROOM
Jewish communities led more or less separate lives, but the photographs do portray a dynamic city that integrated Chinese and European cultures. After the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, Japan controlled Shanghai. Jews were initially treated the same as other non-Chinese, but in February, 1943, Colonel Josef Meisinger, Gestapo Chief in East Asia (also known as the Butcher of Warsaw), arrived in Shanghai. He attempted to persuade the Japanese military command to exterminate Shanghai’s Jews, but they resisted. Under pressure they established a ghetto in the district of Hongkew where all stateless refugees who arrived after 1937 were compelled to live.
But the inhabitants were able to continue running businesses outside the ghetto and to come and go more or less as they wished. The Japanese Vice-Consul in Shanghai, Mitsugi Shibata, warned Jewish community leaders of Meisinger’s intentions, actions for which he was imprisoned and later deported to Tokyo. The Jewish community’s fortunes changed when Japan lost the war. Chiang Kai Shek announced that stateless refugees would be expelled. For most people repatriation was not an option and the future was uncertain. It is disturbing to remember that after World War II, Jewish refugees were unwelcome nearly everywhere. The first major exodus to Australia took
place in 1946, but officials halted the flow in mid-1947 when a report from the Australian Consul-General in Shanghai, quoted in the exhibition, described the city’s Jews as people with “pasts unknown and unspeakable, their intentions obscure”. Nonetheless, those Jews carrying British passports had no trouble travelling to Australia. At a time when refugees continue to be regarded with suspicion and fear, this exhibition celebrates the tolerance exemplified in multicultural Shanghai. It also extols the contribution those refugees have gone on to make as Australian citizens. Kirstie Archer e-mail: [email protected]
Tools of the trade The Smith-Clarke Respirator he iron lung, or cabinet respicollar. It was witnessing the distress rator, devised in 1929, was a caused by this procedure that seems life-saving device. But early to have prompted Smith-Clarke to models were alarming and uncomfortimprove the design. able for patients, inconvenient for Working initially in a disused airnurses, and expensive. Credit for raid shelter, he added large windows, inventing the iron lung must go to strip lighting (which also served as Philip Drinker of Harvard University, heating), alarms, a foot-rest, tilting USA, but it was the chairman of a —had turned car production lines at mechanism, and wheels. SmithWarwickshire Hospital Management Cowley, Oxford, UK, over to making Clarke began to experiment with a Committee in the UK who, in the Both respirators, and offered one free to rubber collar that split in half to 1950s, made this device vastly more any hospital in the British Empire. admit the patient’s head. Eventually, user-friendly. Captain he devised an innovaG T Smith-Clarke tive way of getting (1884–1960) became patients in and out: Rights were not granted to include this image chairman of Coventry the entire top of the in electronic media. Please refer to the printed Group HMC in 1951, respirator was hinged after retiring from the and opened upwards, journal. Alvis Motor Company. making the iron lung He had already imlook “like a somewhat proved existing medical special bed”, with “no devices, and his work resemblance, fancied or on iron lungs resulted real, to a coffin”. His in a new model that respirator was soon eventually replaced dubbed the “alligator”. most of the older types Design solutions used in the UK. from the motor indusDrinker’s lung had try were freely borbeen tank-like huge, rowed. Smith-Clarke heavy, and made of wanted the hinged tops metal. Its development made of fibreglass, just was funded in part Smith-Clarke adult cabinet respirator with separate pump unit (1953) coming into use for car by the new gas and bodies. This material electricity companies in the USA. Both respirators undoubtedly saved proved too expensive, but another piece Alarmed at the effect of fatal accidents the lives of many people with polio, but of technology transferred more successon sales, these companies hoped for a their shape and wooden construction fully: the cover for the intravenous resuscitation device (which, of course, gave them an unfortunate resemblance line port in his new iron lung closely the iron lung was not). In 1952, there to coffins. They had other drawbacks resembled the quick-release petrol caps were 30 Drinker respirators in the UK, too—only two small nursing ports at used in Monza-type racing cars. but nearly 700 Both iron lungs—a the head end, and no heating, lighting, Ghislaine Lawrence modification designed in Australia in or alarm system. And, as with other Clinical Medicine, The Science Museum, 1938. In 1939, Lord Nuffield— iron lungs, the patient’s head had to be London SW7 2DD, UK philanthropic owner of Morris Motors squeezed through the air-tight rubber Science Museum/Science and Society Picture Library
T
716
THE LANCET • Vol 359 • February 23, 2002 • www.thelancet.com
For personal use. Only reproduce with permission from The Lancet Publishing Group.