City walk - Jewish Refugee sites in Shanghai of WW II

Ocean liners docked in this center of business and glamor. The Sassoon Peace (Cathay) Hotel resembled New York skyscrapers. From here the refugees drove east on trucks over the Garden Bridge towards mass dorms in Hongkou (Hongkew). (Consider a detour to see the Embankment building, built by Sassoonn in 1931. Victor Sassoon donated the ground floor to refugee dorms and administration until other buildings could be acquired. An entry from the ‘Emigranten Adressbuch’ lists services with an Embankment address)

Take a left when exiting the Waibaidu Garden) Bridge for the Embankment building. The Sassoon company opened Shanghai’s largest and most modern apartment building in 1932. Victor Sassoon donated the ground floor to refugee dorms and administration until other buildings could be acquired. An entry from the ‘Emigranten Adressbuch’ lists services with an Embankment address)

Hongkou (Hongkew) had suffered much destruction during the 1937 Sino-Japanese War. The Sassoon and other businesses owned some of the damaged real estate and offered cheap loans for enterprising refugees with business ideas. Others had help from family outside of Germany. In a remarkable recovery, so many stores with German signs emerged that the area in Hongkou was called ‘Little Berlin’ or Little Vienna’. Even old archival maps of Hongkou list some European names, such as ‘Café Delikat’ or a doctor’s office. As mentioned in the introduction, most street names have changed – but the numbers were maintained so we can match old to new maps, and old photos to new addresses.

Those who could, resettled in the better British or French concession. That came to an abrupt end for most (there were exemptions) in February 1943. The Japanese had relented to German pressure and issued a “proclamation “ that within 3 months all ‘recent Stateless Refugees’ (a euphemism for German Jews) must relocate back into a ‘designated zone’ in Hongkou that could only be exited with a passage note for work or school. Some businesses could not re-open, others lost their work. Many started selling household items they could spare. Families crowded – along with many Chinese into one room per family. Some plain Cafés or rooftop bars brought relief from the heat.

The Jewish Refugee Museum – former Ohel Moshe Synagogue was founded in 1907 for Orthodox Jews and in 1927 moved to the current address at 62 Changyang Lu ( Ward Road). It held services there until 1949. In 2007 renovation started for a museum which opened the following year. In 2019 a second renovation added many historical details. After the fall of the Berlin Wall ‘Shanghailänder’ Sonja Mühlberger (b. 1939 in Shanghai) started a decades-long effort to collect, compile, and digitize all known refugee names. Her work resulted in a 2005 CD-ROM, a searchable database on the museum website, and a 2014 ‘Wall of Names’ cast in Bronze in the museum courtyard. Daily visitors search and find the name of a relative. For her work Mrs. Mühlberger received a German 'Order of Merit' in 2019. Next to it is a sculpture of Dr. Ho Feng Shan, Consul General in Vienna who issued thousands of transit and exit visas for Austrian Jews. He has been awarded the honorary title ‘Righteous among Nations’ by Yad Vachem, Israel.

Michael Blumenthal lived in this house with his parents. He arrived as a teenager and classmate Horst Eisfelder - son of the owners of Café Louis around the corner- became a lifelong friend. The successful Café had to move to 24 Changyang Rd (Ward Rd) after the ‘Proclamation’. Today it is the site of the Tilanqiao Metro Stop. Eisfelders moved to Australia, but the Blumenthal family emigrated to the US. Michael Blumenthal became Treasure Secretary under President Carter, and later the founding director of the Jewish Museum Berlin. (See also several entries on his family in Jewish Places). . . Listen to the two friends at the Jewish Museum Berlin event 'Exile in Shanghai' in 2006.

Look for cast-iron writing in the entrance gate overhead in Roman lettering ‘Chusan Liegh’ and a Jewish Star in a door window in the inside lane #3.

In a house near the end of the block, Dentist Erwin Warschauer practiced above ‘Café Delikat’, run by his wife Eva Warschauer. It is a perfect example of how we can trace photographs, names, and the human fates behind them. Erwin, Eva, and their 3-year-old son Ralph are listed in the database by Sonja Mühlberger and the Café named in the Chinese archive map. Matching the old archive map with Google Maps – and finding old photos with street numbers to match was a creative puzzle.

Around the corner from Zhoushan Rd on 57 Huoshan Road is a large Art Deco building, designed by Brandt & Rogers in 1930. It still stands but is currently closed. Called the ‘Broadway Theater’ building on (then) Wayside Road it served multiple purposes from music or theater performances to movie screenings to sabbath services for different congregations. Upstairs, the Wendriner family had opened ‘Roy’s Roof Garden’ (also ‘‘Mascot Café’ under a different owner) offered a breeze in summer.

At the end of Zhoushan Road is a small park with a plaque and a stone monument commemorating Jewish refugee history in Chinese, English, and Hebrew.

Diagonally across from the park is a set of houses that includes the former JDC office. The US-based organization organized support and aid. Laura Margolies was their outstanding organizer between 1941 - 1946. Their work was made very hard when the USA entered the war. Not only did Margolies become an ‘enemy alien’ on Japanese-occupied territory - but Japanese-occupied China was also enemy territory to the US – so funds for Jewish refugees were stopped. Only with tenacity and diplomacy could Laura Margolies and her colleagues keep reduced soup kitchens and help for about 10,000 destitute refugees afloat.

This is the first – and only remaining - dorm-style camp of a total of 5 ‘Heime’. Up to 200 per room slept on bunk beds in ‘male’ or female dorms between January 1939 and its closing in the late 1940s. Soup kitchen duty helped serve up to 10,000 persons with 2 meals a day (rationed to 1 meal a day when funds ran out in 1943). The JDC organized food purchases, cooking and cleaning – and of course, fund-raising.

The Ward Road Heim later added a hospital and a maternity ward, as well as some room for indoor celebrations.

The gate opens to a courtyard that can still be visited. A plaque commemorates the location.

This is an approximate address of the Shanghai Jewish Chronicle office, a German daily paper published by Ossi Levin between May 1939 – Sept 1945. It was briefly closed down due to suspicion of Japanese collaboration, but reopened as Shanghai Echo between 1946-1948. Though sometimes criticized for appeasing Japanese occupiers for mercantile interest, Levin prioritized the need to keep the community paper open. 

The largely disinterested Japanese position towards the Jewish refugees (despite German pressure) is a topic too extensive for this post – and subject of dissertations and books. For one example, see 'Kranzler, David. Japanese, Nazis & Jews.' in the above literature listing.

The digitized copies of remaining Shanghai Jewish Chronicle issues at the Leo Baeck Archive give excellent insights into the cultural, political, and personal lives of German-speaking refugees. They also helped connect a community rarely able to read English - much less Chinese. 

Global news gave updates on the war and allied moves. Local news focused on culture, religion, and schools – most important among them became the ‘Kadoorie school'.

( A brief excursion: While Sassoon’s philanthropy focused on housing and business, Kadoorie founded a new Jewish school that taught students and adults English and marketable skills such as typewriting or crafts. The former Kadoorie school is outside this tour but can be found at 627 East Yuhang Road.)

The pages of small ads in the paper give us a sampling of social life (ads for cafés, stores, school or synagogue events) – and economic life (jobs wanted, sale of goods, services offered). Event notices from music performances to school soccer games alternate with desperate offers to earn a living, such as “I iron old hats” or “selling family silver”. The paper also announced mail arrived on the latest ship, or arriving relatives looking for their family. Of a selection of ads and articles, some are referring to places on this tour.

Other German publications were shorter-lived and were printed weekly or monthly. Among them, the Gelbe Post though short-lived (1939-1940) was a distinguished literary and cultural magazine, published by Albert Josef Storfer, a Viennese lawyer from the Sigmund Freud circle. One of his regular writers was Berliner Willy Tonn, a sinologist, professor at the Tung Te University and director of the ‘Asia Seminars’ at the Kadoorie school and Quaker society. His articles brought an understanding of Chinese culture and customs to the German readership. (More detail under the Leo Baeck link below.)

The digitized copies of the Shanghai Jewish Chronicle and Gelbe Post can be found at the Leo Baeck Institute Archive (LBI), the Internet Archive, and other international shared libraries.

Tangshan (Tongshan) Road was another center of small street shops and tight refugee housing in back lanes. (As you walk down the street see the plaque and turn into the alley of 599 Tangshan. The 2019 entrance gate still shows the same three Chinese characters as in the 1940s. 

Sonja Mühlberger used to live here as a child with her parents and brother. She chose the photo of her old address as a cover for the book she co-edited 'Exil Shanghai 1938-1947. by G. Armbrüster,  M. Kohlstruck, S.Mühlberger.'. - see also the literature link below.

In 1939 Viennese restaurateurs Rudolf and Rosa Mosberg together with two friends opened ‘Zum Weissen Rößl’ (named after the Vienna Operetta) across from its present location. Apart from food, they offered frequent music or entertainment, a welcome source of income for the performing artists. After the war, the Mosbergs moved to Australia. 

In 2009 the building was torn down to widen Changyang Road but rebuilt at the next corner to open as ‘White Horse Inn - Zum Weissen Rößl’, or in Chinese: ‘Baima Coffee' on August 26, 2015. Inside you find several walls filled with photos from its 1940s patrons.

A little extra if you want to explore further: look for the Temple on 73 Kwenming Road (now Xiahaimiao 下海庙) – near Haimen Lu. This is one of the surviving Buddhist temples. Peter Max (b. 1937 in Shanghai), who later became an established artist in the US, credits his Chinese Amah with being his first painting teacher when she took him to this temple – near his Shanghai home.