Some historical roots of “an interconnected world”

I was staring up at the synagogue today, this hundred-year old building in the middle of Shanghai, and it suddenly hit me how small, transient and wide-spread the Jewish experience has been, and for so long. I tend to think of the time before commercial airplanes as slow, and somewhat lazy or relaxed, when it took forever for anything to get very far, especially information and people. Things like the morse code or telegrams had to exist because otherwise nothing would get done. And travelling from Europe to the edge of the Pacific, on either side, seems to have been a trip too long to bother with. Which is probably why only soldiers and rich people did it.

Within this frame I suddenly thought of what it must have been like to be a Jewish refugee here in Shanghai during World War II. Because those are the only other people who would make that trip – people with no other choice.

Let’s picture it. You’re in your teens, arriving with your parents, or maybe in your twenties, arriving by yourself. You have to go through Japan, via Panama, or via the trans-Siberian railroad. Imagine the weeks (the months!) on trains or boats or both! Imagine the discomfort, the motion-sickness, the hard beds. Kids playing games to pass the time. Reading and re-reading the few available books, maybe sharing them with each other. Knowing with certainty that undertaking such a trip – with all its difficulties – is better than the horrors you left behind. Maybe that’s what kept people sane.  

In Japan you stay for a few days, a week, with another thousand refugees, because it’s just one more country that can’t – wont’ – take you in. It’s just part of the trip out of death-ridden Europe. Salvation, of course, but too temporary to be a sustainable solution. Maybe there’s a camp there. Bunk-beds, open showers, too little food and too many people, dirt, lice.

Then, finally, Shanghai. The only city in the world where you don’t need a visa, where you are welcome. Another crowded boat, children and parents on the deck, and you standing there alone with your meager belongings wrapped up in a bundle, lying at your feet. You gaze out and see the spectacular outline of this strange city, this city that you hope will be a free and safe, if temporary, home. High European buildings line the riverfront, hiding the truly local Chinese lifestyle that sprawls behind.

You disembark, cross a bridge over a big creek, and arrive at your new neighborhood.

The people are nice there, warm, friendly. They help with the children, with the food. They are your neighbors. Not refugees, but owning perhaps exactly the same amount of stuff. You learn to communicate with each other. You learn from them. Maybe even make friends. When else in history – how else – would once-affluent European Jews get to share their daily lives with lower-class Chinese? Even today, with all the traveling and mixing, this is a hard thing to achieve.

Then one day, the neighborhood closes in on itself, enveloping everyone in it. The Japanese, to appease the Gestapo, create the first and only Jewish ghetto in Shanghai. The uniqueness of this ghetto is evident. Jews and Chinese coexisted as semi-prisoners, both suffering under the hardness of the Japanese rule.

Life becomes less comfortable. Working is hard, as is going to school, because you need special permit to leave the ghetto. Nonetheless, Jewish books, magazines and newspapers are published. People celebrate the holidays. Shops, bakeries, pharmacies, cafes open and flourish. Children are born. People get married. Maybe you are one of them.

And then, just like that, a decade passes. Suddenly it’s 1950, and almost no one is left. The Japanese are gone. Communism is coming, and business becomes impossible. People found their surviving family members, moved to America, Australia, Israel.  So you pack you bags, now perhaps significantly bigger, get on a boat, and go to reunite with the few distant cousins left to you.  

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Subsequently, the refugees thought very fondly of their time in Shanghai. It seems that the significance of it lies not merely on the fact that they were saved from a horrendous death, but also in that they were truly welcomed by the local population, and were allowed to flourish. Even the Japanese had nothing against the Jews, and were much more severe on their Chinese neighbors.

 A beam of light in an otherwise horrendous decade. 

The Museum (September 27, 2011, part 2)

As I walked into the dark-red brick compound, S pointed to the security guards – older Chinese men in light-blue uniforms. She introduced me and I asked her to tell them that even though I don’t speak Chinese now, I am going to learn and work hard so I can talk to them. One of them, the head guard who’d been there for a long time, greeted me in Hebrew. “Naim meod lehacir otakh”, he said, in the strongest shanghainese accent you can imagine. It took me a second to realize it was Hebrew, but then I laughed and answered, “naim meod”. He then wished me a shana tova (because it’s Rosh Hashana, he clarified). I appreciate moments like that. It reminds me that I’m not jaded enough to stop enjoying how inter-connected the world is. And it’s one of those strange connections that seem to skip a few beats. This man doesn’t speak English, but is comfortable sustaining a basic conversation in Hebrew.

The synagogue were the Museum is housed is modest and beautiful. My first, personal reaction was that here is a little tiny part of the huge puzzle that was the Holocaust that I knew nothing about. It adds a deeper layer to the phrase “world war”. There’s always something new to learn, and it’s always great when the new thing is as life-changing as this detail in history was. About thirty-thousand people were saved because Shanghai opened its doors to them. And here I am, coming back to this city to represent an organization that was here 70 years ago, helping the refugees. It’s like holding a little piece of history in my hand. It’s an honor of the sort that until now I have not been privy to. I'm beginning to understand that a big part of my experience in Shanghai will have something to do with this connection that both JDC and the Jewish people in general have with this amazing city. 

The building was taken over by trader Jews in 1927, when they began using it as a synagogue. I wonder what brought them here to this neighborhood. Even now, after much of Shanghai has modernized, it remains stuck in its former humble glory. The lane houses are old and packed, street vendors line the corners, and the side streets are full of little fabric and household items shops, repairmen, laundry services and babies. It’s wonderful.

Behind the synagogue is a beautiful courtyard, surrounded by these little lane houses. Two small buildings erected in the courtyard portray the history of the Jewish refugees through pictures and videos. The synagogue has four floors: the first, main synagogue floor, the second balcony floor (where the women used to pray), which now has a conference table and computers for research, the third floor which is now an art gallery, and a little tiny attic, where the office is. I love it up there. We have a good view of the street from the balcony, the ceiling is low, and everything is wood and cozy. It’s a nice place to come to.

(I’d like to take this opportunity to apologize for the lack of order in the posts; I really wanted to share these three posts that I wrote almost two months ago when I arrived in Shanghai. From now on they will correspond to the dates!              - 10/11/2011)