I saw a recommendation for the detective novels of S. J. Rozan so I chose one at random from the local library. It turns out that The Shanghai Moon unfolds the mystery of a long-missing piece of jewelry which had belonged to a Jewish refugee woman in China. As is often the case with fiction I was informed about history. I didn't know at all. Were you aware that China took in Jews fleeing the Nazis during World War 2? I began snooping around and found a BBC piece which includes this description:
For thousands of desperate people in the 1930s, this Chinese metropolis was a last resort. Most countries and cities on the planet had restricted entry for Jews trying to flee violent persecution by Nazi Germany. Not Shanghai, however. This multicultural oasis – that included British, French, American, Russian and Iraqi residents – was among the very few places Jewish refugees were guaranteed to be accepted, with no visa required.
Despite Shanghai being more than 7,000km from their homes in Germany, Poland and Austria, more than 20,000 stateless Jews fled to China's largest city to escape the Holocaust between 1933 and 1941. Shanghai was not just a safe haven. It was also a modern city with an established community of Russian Jews, who a decade earlier, had built the structure that held that Star of David: the Ohel Moshe Synagogue.
Most of us are aware that supposedly compassionate Christian nations such as Canada and the United States rejected Jews who were being persecuted in Germany. In 2018 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologized for Canada's role in turning away the MS St Louis, a ship carrying over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in 1939. The ship was forced to return to Europe and 254 of the refugees later died in Nazi concentration camps.
This is an ugly episode in our history, and there is an irony in our criticism of China's very real human rights violations.
Jewish refugees aboard the MS St Louis
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