Introduction
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Notes Introduction 1. Translated from my interview with Martin Beutler, Berlin, June 29, 1995, Shanghai Jewish Community Oral History Project, p. 545. This passage is published in my book, Shanghai-Geschichten: die jüdische Flucht nach China (Berlin: Hentrich und Hentrich, 2007), p. 241, which uses interviews in German to present the stories of 12 Shanghai refugees who later returned to Germany and Austria. 2. David Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis and Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai 1938–1945 (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1976). See also James R. Ross , Escape to Shanghai: A Jewish Community in China (New York: Free Press, 1994). Films include Port of Last Resort (1999) by Paul Rosdy and Joan Grossman, and Shanghai Ghetto (2002) by Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amir Mann. 3. Among the first were Evelyn Pike Rubin, Ghetto Shanghai (New York: Shengold Books, 1993); and I. Betty Grebenschikoff, Once My Name Was Sara (Ventnor, NJ: Original Seven Publishing Co., 1993). By combining the details of his own family’s stories with considerable research about the whole com- munity, the late Ernest Heppner’s Shanghai Refuge: A Memoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1993) is the best of the memoirs. See the bibliography for this growing literature. 4. The most successful thus far is Michèle Kahn, Shanghai-la-juive (Paris: Flammarion, 1997). Vivian Jeanette Kaplan fictionalized her family’s expe- rience in Ten Green Bottles: The True Story of One Family’s Journey from War- torn Austria to the ghettos of Shanghai (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004). Most recently, Andrea Alban has written a book for young adults, Anya’s War (New York: Feiwel & Friends, 2011). 5. Leo Spitzer, Hotel Bolivia: The Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998) notes the wide spectrum of estimates for German Jewish refugees to Bolivia, ranging from 7,000 to 60,000. Spitzer’s estimate is 20,000 (p. 203, n. 2). 6. These are generally accepted estimates, cited for example in Walter Laqueur, Generation Exodus: The Fate of Young Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2001), pp. 20–21; Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, Vol. 1, Years of Persecution 1933–1939 (NY: HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 62, 245; Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 132; Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust (New York: Franklin 248 / Notes Watts, 1982), p. 109; Ino Arndt and Heinz Boberach, “Deutsches Reich,” in Dimension des Völkermords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Wolfgang Benz, (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1991), pp. 35; and Jonny Moser, “Österreich,” in Dimension des Völkermords , ed. Wolfgang Benz, p. 68. But Niewyk and Nicosia , Columbia Guide to the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 419, also cites a much higher set of estimates compiled by the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland. 7. Relatively precise estimates exist for the early years of Nazi power, from 1933 through 1937. Beginning with 1938, yearly totals of the masses of Jews who poured out of the Third Reich vary widely, and many sources do not even attempt estimates. 8. Niewyk and Nicosia, Columbia Guide to the Holocaust , p. 420, cites a figure of 40 percent from the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland, which however seems much too high. 9. This phrase comes from Leo Spitzer, Hotel Bolivia , p. 63. 10. Wolfgang Benz, ed., Das Exil der kleinen Leute: Alltagserfahrungen deutscher Juden in der Emigration (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1994). The poorest Jews were less likely to escape: Stephanie Schüler-Spangorum, “Fear and Misery in the Third Reich: From the Files of the Collective Guardianship Office of the Berlin Jewish Community,” Yad Vashem Studies 27 (1999), pp. 61–103. 11. Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 3rd edition, p. 260. 12. Lawrence Langer argues that oral accounts are “rich in spontaneous rather than calculated effects.” Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 129. 13. The full transcripts of these and many other of my interviews in the Shanghai Jewish Community Oral History Project are available online through Bates College. 14. A fine general history is Betty Peh-T’i Wei, Shanghai: Crucible of Modern China (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1987). 15. Translated from my interview with Heinz Grünberg, Vienna, May 31, 1995, Shanghai Jewish Community Oral History Project, p. 1. This interview, con- ducted in German, is also quoted extensively in Shanghai-Geschichten. 16. For example, the discovery a few years after publication in 1995 that Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood (New York: Schocken, 1997) by Binjamin Wilkomirski was an invention. 17. The relationship among event, memory and retelling has recently been the focus of much analysis. A brief summary of the issues by one of the experts on Holocaust interviews is Henry Greenspan, “Survivors’ Accounts,” in The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies, ed. Peter Hayes and John K. Roth (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 414–27. 18. This is Langer’s argument about “deep memory,” based on hundreds of Holocaust interviews, in Holocaust Testimonies. 19. Translated from my interview with Rita Opitz, Berlin, June 26, 1995, Shanghai Jewish Community Oral History Project, p. 8. Opitz is one of the narrators in Shanghai-Geschichten. 20. On this subject, see also Helga Embacher and Margit Reiter, “Geschlechterbeziehungen in Extremsituationen: Österreichische und deutsche Frauen im Shanghai der dreißiger und vierziger Jahre,” in Exil Notes / 249 Shanghai 1938–1947: Jüdisches Leben in der Emigration, ed. Georg Armbrüster, Michael Kohlstruck, and Sonja Mühlberger (Berlin: Hentrich und Hentrich, 2000), pp. 133–46. 1 In the Third Reich 1. The classic work on restrictive American immigration policies is David Wyman, Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis 1938–1941 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1968). See also Bat-Ami Zucker, “American Refugee Policy in the 1930s,” in Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States, ed. Frank Caestecker and Bob Moore (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), p. 162. 2. In October, 1934, 32 Jewish doctors from Germany were reported to be prac- ticing in Shanghai: “Refugee Doctors Settle in Orient,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 5, 1934, JTA Jewish News Archive. James R. Ross, Escape to Shanghai: A Jewish Community in China (New York: Free Press, 1994), pp. 24–25, describes some of the early refugees. 3. The report is reproduced by Moshe Avalon, “‘Gegenwaertige Situation’: Report on the Living Conditions of the Jews in Germany. A Document and Commentary,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 1998: 271–85. 4. For example, Varian Fry, an American journalist who helped several thou- sand anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape from Vichy France in 1940, was constantly harassed by American authorities. 5. Ho describes his diplomatic career in My Forty Years as a Diplomat (Pittsburgh, PA: Dorrance Publishing Co., 2010), translated and edited by his son, Monto Ho. 6 . Rebetsin means wife of the rabbi and was a term of highest respect in Jewish communities. 7. On June 14, 1938, the Nazis promulgated an addendum to the Nuremberg Laws, which made it easier to plunder Jewish businesses. On that night, between 1,500 and 2,500 Jewish men who had any kind of criminal record, including traffic offenses, were arrested and sent to concentra- tion camps. 8. In order to get a visa to enter the United States, Jews had to have an affi- davit from a U.S. citizen promising to support them in case they could not support themselves. 9. Kurt Schuschnigg (1897–1977) succeeded the assassinated Engelbert Dollfuss in 1934 as Chancellor of Austria. In 1938, he was imprisoned by Nazi Germany following the Anschluss and survived Dachau and Sachsenhausen. 10. The Physikum is the first major exam during medical study. 11. The first mass rail transports of Jews from Vienna to Poland took place in October 1939. 12. The Stürmer was a violently antisemitic Nazi newspaper published by Julius Streicher. 13. This treaty was signed in August 1939. 14. On April 26, 1938, the Nazi government issued the Order Requiring the Declaration of Jewish Property, which forced all Jews to declare their hold- ings in Germany over 2,000 Mark, including art, jewelry, and businesses. 250 / Notes 2 Leaving Home 1. In the city of Worms, nearly every German Jew tried to get out after Kristallnacht, but most only succeeded in securing a place on an intermina- ble waiting list: Henry R. Huttenbach, “The Emigration of Jews from Worms (November 1938–October 1941): Hopes and Plans,” in Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust: Proceedings of the Second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1977), pp. 267–88. 2. Christiane Hoss, “ Abenteurer: Wer waren die Shanghai-Flüchtlinge aus Mitteleuropa?” in Exil Shanghai 1938–1947, ed. Georg Armbrüster, Michael Kohlstruck, and Sonja Mühlberger, (Berlin: Hentrich und Hentrich, 2000), p. 107. Numbers of arriving refugees come from a compilation of informa- tion about ship arrivals and numbers of refugees on board, which were consistently reported by the Shanghai Municipal Police to the Shanghai Municipal Council, the real government of the city run mainly by foreign businessmen and diplomats. The reports are located in the records of the SMP, file D5422(c). 3. For a detailed study of the changing official policies that governed entry into Shanghai, see Steve Hochstadt, “Shanghai: a Last Resort for Desperate Jews,” in Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States , ed. Frank Caestecker and Bob Moore (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010). pp. 109–21.