8 - Women in the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Community

Summary

To Shanghai! But you've only three more months to wait before your visa from America comes through. Why go to the Orient? . . . almost took my life last week. Only this news, that one can get easily to Shanghai, kept me from doing it.

During the late 1930s and 1940s, Shanghai became a haven for almost 17,000 German and Austrian as well as some 1,000 Polish-Jewish refugees. The combined total exceeded the number of refugees from the three countries accepted by the British Commonwealth nations of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India. Of the Central European refugees, women made up about 40 percent of the Germans and less than 10 percent of the Poles. In this chapter, I focus on the Jewish women who underwent this experience.

Women first played a special role in the exodus from Nazism in the aftermath of Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938), which set off the panic flight of most German Jews. Because only men - approximately 20,000 - were arrested and placed in concentration camps, women became responsible for obtaining a visa to any country willing to accept them and the men. In this way, they could obtain the release of their husbands, fathers, and brothers. But in those days it was very difficult to get a visa. At the Evian Conference of July 1938, the United States resolved to maintain narrow quotas. This act was aped by virtually every other nation.