The Shammos of Shanghai

By Douglas M. Bloomfield

SHANGHAI, China ‹ At 77, Wang Fa Liang still has a lot of bounce in his step and effervesces with enthusiasm for his neighborhood. But then it’s not just any neighborhood in this bustling and teeming city of 13 million.

He has lived in the neighborhood all his life and delights in showing visitors around the streets and alleys, oblivious to the buses, bicycles, taxis and pedestrians that seem to be going in all directions at once.

During World War II his neighborhood was home to as many as 30,000 Jews, most of them refugees from Hitler’s Europe. Officially the “designated area for stateless refugees,” it was the Jewish Ghetto of Shanghai.

“I worked for a Jewish Cafe in Frenchtown, Didi’s Cafe, and I made out the bills. The waiters were all White Russian Jews; two of them, their names were Stein and Friedman, introduced me to a Jewish family who were selling their house when they were leaving Shanghai in 1946. I’ve lived there ever since,” Wang Fa said.

He is the living memory of the old ghetto, its “shammos” who looks after what was once the ghetto’s synagogue, Ohel Moishe, at 62 Chang Yang Road.

Where Jewish children studied Hebrew on the first floor there is now a state owned technical publishing company. Two rooms on the third floor that once housed the sanctuary are meeting rooms for government agencies but also memorials to the synagogue’s past.

On the door frame is a mezuzzah donated by the Colonia, NJ, Hadassah chapter in 1974 and pictures of distinguished visitors like former Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres and President Chiam Herzog. There is also a picture of the ghetto’s most distinguished alumnus, Michael Blumenthal, who was secretary of the treasury in the Carter Administration and recently was named director of Berlin’s Holocaust Museum.

The Shanghai Jewish community, dating to the 1840s, was created by Sephardi Jews with names like Sassoon, Kadoorie and Hardoon from places like Baghdad, Cairo, Bombay and Singapore. They built hugely successful business empires and many of the city’s famous landmarks.

Early in the 20th century a new influx of Ashkenazi Jews came from Russia, fleeing pogroms and then the Communist Revolution.

“When I was young the bus drivers in Shanghai were about all Russian Jews; it was a British bus company. Other Jews worked on the railroad, kept stores, were furriers and some were street vendors,” said Wang Fa.

On the eve of World War II there were about 10,000 Jews in Shanghai, mostly Russian, he said. The Sephardi community was small but wealthy, he added.

Many Russian Jews had first settled in Northeast China in cities like Harbin, Tianjin and Dalian, but moved to Shanghai after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in the early 1930s.

There were seven synagogues in those days. Only two of the buildings remain ‹ Ohel Moishe, built in 1927, and Ohev Rachel, which was founded in 1920 by Sir Jacob Sassoon and is currently occupied by Shanghai’s Education Commission. During that period there were some 50 Jewish newspapers and magazines published in at least nine languages; 30 continued publishing during the war years. The largest was the English language Israel’s Messenger, which was published next door to Ohel Moishe.

It was a vibrant community, the largest in the Far East, with cafes, bakeries, schools, theaters, clinics, political clubs, a hospital and cemeteries.

Jews fled to Shanghai throughout the Thirties because it was the one place that did not require a visa. Most came by ship from Italy and the early arrivals brought many valuables and belongings, but later ones fled with little more than a suitcase.

“So many came from Austria that some people called the ghetto ‘Little Vienna.’ The most popular place was a cafe by that name,” said Wang Fa.

Although the Japanese took Shanghai in 1937, they did not take over the international areas until after Pearl Harbor and then, under pressure from their German allies, ordered the Jews into the ghetto, which was less than two miles square.

“The Gestapo sent spies here during the war,” Wang Fa said. “They tried unsuccessfully to get the Japanese to participate in the final solution; instead the Japanese set up this ghetto for refugees who had arrived since 1937, but really it was just for Jews.

“The Japanese didn’t kill them, and they didn’t help them. They did not treat immigrants so badly. The rich Jewish families in Shanghai gave money to the Japanese government; it’s hard to say why,maybe for survival and protection, so the Japanese did not treat the Jews so badly as Hitler.”

The American Joint Distribution Committee sent people who helped the Jewish refugees and set up their offices at Ohel Moishe in 1938.

“The Chinese and the Jews lived as good neighbors together during those difficult years. Many Chinese were helping the Jews. We sympathized with each other. We liked their long history and culture, and they liked ours,” said Wang Fa.

“Many refugees died here,” he said. In July 1945 the US Army Air Force attacked a nearby Japanese munitions depot and some bombs mistakenly hit the ghetto, killing 31 Jewish refugees.

Many of the refugees were doctors, professors, engineers and musicians, he said. There was a hospital in the ghetto that is today an apartment building with a small neighborhood health clinic attached. “We Chinese called it the refugee hospital. It was a maternity hospital, and wounded people from the air raids were brought here,” he explained.

“Some of the Jewish engineers worked for the Japanese occupation authorities, ” said Wang Fa, and after the war many of the Jews worked for the US liberation forces and the US Air Force because of the English skills.”

But with the end of the war, the Jewish community began to leave. Many went to Israel as well as North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Those who did not leave right after the occupation ended fled in the wake of the communist takeover and the cultural revolution.

But they haven’t forgotten, and many still hold reunions here and in their new countries. During the 1994 reunion here, the city put up a memorial plaque, in Chinese, Hebrew and English, in the park that was once the center of the ghetto.Where Jewish children once played, elderly Chinese today gather to talk, do their taichi exercises and play checkers and mahj jong.

Wang Fa excitedly takes visitors through the park, past the Jewish theater, to the former hospital, he stops at what was once the Vienna Cafe to reminisce. He asks everyone to sign the guest book at Ohel Moishe and points out the names of dignitaries, alumni and tourists who have visited the old synagogue. He is delighted that the Shanghai Jews have not forgotten their former home and that so many others are discovering it.

©1997 Douglas M. Bloomfield