CHINA DAILY SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2012 weekend • world 23 briefl y Recalling Shanghai as WWII LIBYA Pro-Islamist refuge for European Jews elected By CHINA DAILY and Libya’s newly empowered trian citizens Oskar Fiedler The soup kitchens could top legislative body elected a MOLLY BODURTHA and Hermine Moser on July afford to feed each person veteran opponent of Muam- in New York 20, 1938, and June 9, 1939, 1,500 calories a day, which mar Gadhafi ’s ousted regime, respectively. Although his bold was “enough to keep one who is seen as pro-Islamist, as Hunched and weary, the actions directly disobeyed thin but alive”, according to its president late on Th ursday Mohamed al-Megaryef, “stateless refugees” lined up orders from his immediate Jacobson, whose parents took a founding member of the out the door of a soup kitchen superior and resulted in a meals there regularly. “They Libyan National Salva- in pre-revolutionary China demerit in his fi le, the diplo- knew these people were poor tion Front, defeated liberal during the winter of 1937. mat believed the lives saved refugees — not with any par- independent Ali Zidane in Peering anxiously at the outweighed risks to his career. ticular knowledge of the Jews’ a run-off by 113 votes to 85 in the 200-member General place that would soon become In 2000, Ho was posthu- circumstances, but refugees National Congress. their home, the men, women mously given a Righteous nonetheless.” Th e vote in the assembly, and children who gathered that Among the Nations award The exhibit also explains elected in landmark polls on day in search of a meal were the by Yad Vashem, the organi- how the Chinese community July 7, came aft er the National most recent group of German zation that runs Israel’s offi- safeguarded the Jews as pres- Transitional Council handed over power on Wednesday and Austrian Jews to fl ee Nazi- cial Holocaust museum, for sure mounted from Germa- in a symbolic move marking occupied Europe for the prom- “humanitarian courage” at a ny to either exterminate or the fi rst peaceful transition in ising shores of the Far East. time of moral collapse in the deport the refugees. In 1942, Libya’s modern history aft er The moment is immortal- world. Because of his sac- Colonel Joseph Meisenger four decades of Gadhafi ’s rule. ized in a photo included in Des- rifices, 1,200 Austrian Jews of the Gestapo, known as MEXICO tination Shanghai: Th e Jewish were able to escape a grim fate. the “Butcher of Warsaw”, Storm drenches PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY Community of Shanghai, 1936- Some were even released from visited Shanghai to suggest southern Gulf Reena Jailwala, an exchange student in Beijing, poses with a girl from an orphanage in Gansu province 1949, at the Center for Jew- concentration camps to begin that Japanese authorities as she prepares to put on a performance for a school audience. ish History in New York. Th e their search for freedom on the deport the 20,000 Jews liv- Tropical Storm Ernesto exhibit, which opened in late journey to Shanghai. ing there to Chongming, a made landfall on Th ursday June and continues through Th e arrival of many Euro- desolate island at the mouth aft ernoon near the port city of Coatzacoalcos and moved October, tells the story of a pean Jews to the Chinese of the Yangtze River, where inland while drenching US students’ tales far-fl ung outpost of the post- city in 1937 came at a trying a concentration camp could Mexico’s southern Gulf, an World War II Jewish diaspora. time. In July of that year, Japan be built. The Chinese used area prone to fl ooding. But the real subject of Des- launched a full-scale invasion what little power they had to Ernesto spun over the far tination Shanghai, says cura- of China, sparking the War thwart the Nazi offi cer, and southern Gulf of Mexico, across waters dotted with oil tor Renata Stein, isn’t only the Against Japanese Aggression. the Japanese instead passed rigs operated by the state oil plight of European Jews but Shanghai was occupied and a proclamation ordering all company, aft er hurling rain exemplify interest also the hospitality and empa- reduced to rubble. of the city’s Jewish residents across the Yucatan Peninsula thy of their Chinese hosts. Aileen Jacobson, the daugh- into the Hongkou ghetto of but causing little major dam- Stein and her colleagues at ter of two Jewish “Shanghai- downtown Shanghai. age. Th e government closed By YU WEI and MOLLY New York’s Leo Baeck Insti- lander” refugees, caught the After the Jews had been its largest Gulf coast port, BODURTHA in New York Veracruz and the smaller fellowships to take advantage of,” at Jailwala’s Barrington High tute organized the exhibit to exhibit’s opening on June forcibly relocated to the ports of Alvarado and Coat- the Yale student said. School, in 2010 the Barrington encourage some of the era’s 15 and was back on a recent tenements of Hongkou, it zacoalcos. Tao Tao Holmes had a For instance, her university school district’s Chinese depart- surviving refugees to tell their Monday for a second look. was then decreed that they straightforward, if exotic, plan: offers the Richard U Light Fel- ment received a $500,000 grant stories. Although her parents relo- weren’t allowed to leave the AFGHANISTAN explore the Chinese language lowship, a set of programs that from the federal government to “We were also interested in cated to Atlanta shortly aft er ghetto without authoriza- 3 US soldiers and maybe devote some free enables undergraduates with enable students to begin studying having it now so that some she was born in 1947, Jacob- tion and work papers issued killed time during the summer to a facility in East Asian languages the language as early as kinder- of the people who were there son grew up hearing about the by a Japanese offi cial, Kanoh Th ree American special worthy cause. to study in China, Japan or South garten. would still see it and get the hunger her parents endured in Goya. forces soldiers were killed on Multiple trips as a child to Korea. “They are learning half their idea that we are very interested Shanghai before they left . Th e exhibit makes clear that Friday by an Afghan police the Summer Palace in Beijing “A lucky few, oft en in cities like subjects, including science and in their story,” Stein told China “In the mornings, there even though the Jews escaped offi cer who had invited them and the Great Wall — majestic New York and Washington, DC, math, in Chinese,” Jailwala said. Daily. would be people dead on the Europe, they were still sub- for a meal, Afghan offi cials said. but also packed with tourists take Chinese in high school, but a To help serve growing interest On the eve of Nazi occupa- street,” she said. “Th ey would jected to discrimination by the Th e US military in Afghan- — hadn’t piqued her curiosity majority begin in college and stick in Chinese study, US President tion of Europe, Jews in many die overnight and a wagon Japanese occupiers controlling istan confi rmed that three US about the land where her moth- to it,” Holmes said. Barack Obama introduced the countries noted rising anti- would come pick them up in Shanghai. soldiers had been killed by er was born. “And some defi nitely end up as “100,000 Strong” initiative, which Semitism and quickly applied the morning. When Jacobson recently “an individual in an Afghan “I’ve been to China many Sinophiles by the end of it.” aims to increase the number of for emigration, with many for- “They would only be Chi- traveled back to Shanghai, uniform” in Sangin district of southern Helmand province, times,” the 21-year-old from Th at’s certainly true of 17-year US students who spend a semes- tunate to escape the horrors of nese bodies, because the Jews she found her parents’ old but gave no further details. Connecticut said. “Most of them old Reena Jailwala, from the ter or more in China. the Holocaust. had that little bit of that safety Shanghai apartment, now Th e attack was the third so- were over the summer growing Chicago suburb of Barrington, Nearly 14,000 US students in The world’s superpowers, net,” referring to support from lost in the twisting, labyrin- called green-on-blue assault, up. But in recent years I’ve had Illinois. Unlike Holmes, she had 2009-2010 alone received aca- however, didn’t always offer foreign-aid organizations. thine lanes of old Hongkou. in which Afghan forces turn more independent experiences, no family tie to China. Instead, demic credit for study in China. help. “Th e Chinese were very gen- She recalled standing at the their weapons against their NATO allies, in just four days. and my attitudes toward China she seized the rare opportunity The country remains the fifth- For Franz Friedlander, an erous,” Stein said. “They did building’s gate, chatting in have absolutely shifted as I’ve to study Mandarin off ered by her most popular study-abroad Austrian whose journey to not have anything themselves. English with her husband, LIBYA grown older.” public high school. destination for US students, Shanghai is highlighted in And no one was particularly when an elderly Chinese Rebels promise One experience in particular, Jailwala ended up “absolutely and the only one of the top fi ve the exhibit, the United States hostile to the refugees.” man exited and did a double- counterattack in May 2008 at Deyang Middle falling in love with the language,” host countries outside Western initially represented a poten- Despite abject poverty and take, pausing in front of the School in Sichuan province, she said.