The Jews of Shanghai
A Refuge for Jews
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Shanghai became a haven for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution because until August 1939 the International Settlement was an open city requiring no visa or other documents. In contrast, the United States had a quota system and required a police certificate of good character for the previous five years (which was increasingly difficult to acquire from local Nazi leaders, especially since Jews were likely to have served a sentence in German concentration camps) and evidence that they would not become a public charge.
The Japanese, who occupied the entire city of Shanghai as a result of its war with China, imposed immigration restrictions in August 1939. By that date more than 14,000 refugees had streamed into Shanghai (and more were likely as other nations refused to open their shores to Jewish refugees), placing a severe burden on the economy and housing stock of the city as well as upon private charitable resources. But the Japanese imposed restrictions only after being pressured by the Shanghai foreign community, including the Jews themselves. In fact the Japanese acted only after they were assured that American and British Jewish organizations would not protest.
Japanese policy toward the Jews varied from indifference in the 1931-35 period, to a distinctly favorable attitude in 1936-38, which was modified to one of goodwill during 1938-41, and which ranged between neutrality and anti-Semitism during the war years of 1941-45. Japanese policy towards Jews was, of course, influenced by their fascist allies, but also stemmed from their own version of anti-Semitic ideology.
The Japanese accepted the anti-Semitic view of Jewish wealth and power. For example, they actually believed that Jews controlled the press and financial institutions in the United States and Great Britain. They hoped to use this Jewish wealth and influence to aid their development in Asia; they hoped to attract Jewish capital and to avoid antagonizing American public opinion. Their belief in Jewish power arose, in part, from the important role of Jewish bankers in providing loans to Japan during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. It was reinforced by contacts during their military expeditions in 1918 and 1922 to aid the Anti-Bolshevik White Russian forces, who were also virulent Anti-Semites. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other Anti-Semitic propaganda served to "explain" the problems the Japanese were suffering in the 1930s. The Jews became a scapegoat for their depression, the curtailment of their expansion, and the pressure of Western ideas such as modernization and liberalism (even Christianity was seen as a veiled form
of Judaism). Japan's ally Nazi Germany, of course, encouraged their anti-Semitism.
As Dr. David Kranzler, the leading authority on this subject, noted in his monumental work Japanese, Nazis & Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community in Shanghai, 1938-1945, "The key to the distinction between the Japanese and the European form of antisemitism seems to lie in the long Christian tradition of identifying the Jew with the Devil, the Antichrist or someone otherwise beyond redemption ... The Japanese lacked this Christian image of the Jew and brought to their reading of the Protocols a totally different perspective. The Christian tried to solve the problem of the Jews by eliminating him; the Japanese tried to harness his alleged immense wealth and power to Japan's advantage." (pp. 207-08)
This pragmatic approach to anti-Semitism served to save Jewish lives. The immigration restrictions imposed by the Japanese in 1939, combined with a shortage of shipping space and the closure of the sea route through the Mediterranean when Italy entered the War, reduced the immigration to Shanghai to a trickle.
Most of the Jews in Shanghai lived in the poorer Hongkew sector which the Japanese had withdrawn from the International Settlement in 1937 during the War with China. The Jewish community in Shanghai had an extensive Jewish cultural life, which was a new experience for many of the Jewish refugees who had assimilated and had not lived previously in a closed Jewish society with its heightened Jewish consciousness.
The War Years
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