Voices from Shanghai

Jewish Exiles in Wartime China

Irene Eber

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780226181684
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

When Hitler came to power and the German army began to sweep through Europe, almost 20, 000 Jewish refugees fled to Shanghai. A remarkable collection of the letters, diary entries, poems, and short stories composed by these refugees in the years after they landed in China, Voices from Shanghai fills a gap in our historical understanding of what happened to so many Jews who were forced to board the first ship bound for anywhere.
Once they arrived, the refugees learned to navigate the various languages, belief systems, and ethnic traditions they encountered in an already booming international city, and faced challenges within their own community based on disparities in socioeconomic status, levels of religious observance, urban or rural origin, and philosophical differences. Recovered from archives, private collections, and now-defunct newspapers, these fascinating accounts make their English-languge debut in this volume. A rich new take on Holocaust literature, Voices from Shanghai reveals how refugees attempted to pursue a life of creativity despite the hardships of exile.

Table of contents

• Contents
• introduction
• Meylekh Ravitch • “A Rickshaw Coolie Dies on a Shanghai Dawn”(1935)
• Annie F. Witting • Letter (1939)
• Alfred Friedlaender • “Prologue” (1939)
• Egon Varro • “Well, That Too Is Shanghai” (1939) •
• W. Y. Tonn • “Peculiar Shanghai” (1940)
• Annie F. Witting • Letter (1940)
• Lotte Margot • “The Chinese Woman Dances” (1940)
• E. Simkhoni • “Three Countries Spat Me Out” (1941)
• Kurt Lewin • “More Light” (1941) •
• Yehoshua Rapoport • “And So It Begins . . .” (1941)
• Yosl Mlotek • “The Lament of My Mother” (1941)
• E. Simkhoni • “My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me” (1942)
• Mordechai Rotenberg • “Sun in a Net” (1942) •
• Yosl Mlotek • “Shanghai” (1942) •
• Karl Heinz Wolff • “The Diligent Mason” (1942)
• Hermann Goldfarb • “Wandering” (1942)
• Jacob H. Fishman • “Miniatures” (1942)
• Yosl Mlotek • “A Letter . . .” (1943)
• Yehoshua Rapoport • Diary (excerpts, 1941–1943)
• Anonymous • “Pins, Not for Me” (1944)
• Yoni Fayn • “A Poem About Shanghai Ghetto” (1945)
• Herbert Zernik • “A Monkey Turned Human” (1945)
• Shoshana Kahan • In Fire and Flames: Diary of a Jewish Actress (excerpts, 1941–1945)
• Kurt Lewin • “The Weekly Salad” (1946)
• Jacob H. Fishman • “A Wedding” (1947)
• acknowledgments
• notes
• index of names