Kathy Kacer - Shanghai Escape

Shanghai, China. What an unlikely destination for European Jews, trying to escape the cruel, anti-Semitic laws that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party enforced before the Second World War. As more and more Jews sought safe refuge in the 1930s, world leaders came together in France to discuss the issue of what to do about them. The meetings were known as the Evian Conference. Although everyone sympathized with Jewish families who were trying to escape the persecution in Europe, most countries around the world, including Australia, Canada, and the United States, were not willing to offer safe refuge. Shanghai was one place that allowed Jews to enter.

More than twenty thousand Jewish refugees, mostly from Austria and Germany, came to Shanghai between 1937 and 1939. In the early days of their arrival, they established lives that were not all that different from the ones they had left behind in Europe. They opened shops and restaurants; they created theaters and published newspapers; their children attended schools. They lived side by side with their Chinese neighbors in relative freedom. All of this changed after 1941, when Japan attacked the U.S. Navy in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and Japan and the United States entered the Second World War.

Japan and China had been at war for many years. By 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army had occupied Shanghai and imposed harsh conditions on the Chinese citizens who lived there. Japan was also an ally of Nazi Germany. After Pearl Harbor, and under pressure from Adolf Hitler, the Japanese government in Shanghai ordered all the Jewish refugees who had arrived there after 1937 to move into a ghetto in an area of the city called Hongkew.

Twenty thousand Jewish refugees joined nearly a hundred thousand poor Chinese citizens who already lived in Hongkew. Conditions there were harsh. There was little food to eat, poor sanitation, rampant disease, and hardly any medication. Jews needed special pass cards to leave the ghetto and to work in other parts of Shanghai, and these permits, issued by the Japanese, were difficult to obtain. At one point, there was even talk that the Japanese authorities were establishing concentration camps off the coast of Shanghai where Jews would be sent and possibly put to death. The Jewish refugees of Hongkew lived with anxiety and uncertainty about their future.

Lily Toufar and her family arrived in Shanghai in 1938, having fled from Vienna, Austria, on the eve of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. On that night, hundreds of synagogues in Germany and Austria were looted and ransacked, and thousands of Jews were beaten, arrested, and imprisoned. Shanghai was a strange and unfamiliar place to Lily. But life became even more difficult after her family was forced to move into the Hongkew ghetto in 1941. She, like thousands of other Jewish refugees, endured the difficult living conditions, dirt, disease, and death, always hopeful that the war would end and her family would still be alive.

This is Lilys story.

Foreword

November 8, 1938

Their bags were packed and waiting at the door. Suitcases and boxes leaned against one another like building blocks. Lily stood next to the luggage, watching her mother count the pieces over and over.

I hope weve got everything, Mom said, in a voice so soft that Lily had to bend forward to hear her.

Why is Mom whispering when theres no one else in the apartment to hear? Lily wondered. And why is her face so serious? Moms eyebrows were drawn so low they nearly touched the top of her lashes. Lily wrapped her jacket closer around her body and shivered. Even though it was only early November, she felt winter beginning to creep into the apartment. Within a month, her city of Vienna would be blanketed with snow. That had always meant Lily could go tobogganing. She loved racing down snow-covered hills with the wind blowing her short reddish curls straight out behind her. But that was before in winters past. Now she was beginning to wonder if she would ever again see the surrounding hills of Vienna.

Why cant I take my other toys? The sound of her voice echoed in the empty hallway.

Before the war began, Lily lived in Vienna with her Mom and Pop.

Mom paused and looked at her daughter. The lines around her eyes softened, and she reached over to brush Lilys hair behind her ear. Ive explained this to you already. Clothes are more important than dolls, my darling. Lily gazed up at her mother. Mom never wore a smidge of make-up and couldnt have cared less about her appearance. But even now, as she rushed about packing up last minute things, Lily marveled at how nice she still looked, as if she was planning a dinner party and not an escape from their home.

But you packed my books, didnt you, Mom? Were not leaving those behind.

Her mother nodded. Yes, Lily. The books you chose are packed here in this box. You see? she added. Ive written your name on it in black ink.

What about that? Lily pointed to Moms treadle sewing machine one of the only pieces of furniture that stood amongst the cartons and cases.

Mom paused and then spoke again. We have no idea what we will find in Shanghai. We have to be prepared with those things that are really necessary. If Im able to sew, then I can help your father earn money for our family. Now where did I pack the pots? She turned back to surveying the luggage while Lily slumped against the wall.