Database to chronicle Shanghai Jews who fled Nazis
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Shanghai's Israeli consulate and one of the city's middle-class wards are teaming up to compile a database of the Jewish community that thrived in the city when it was a refuge for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.
"This is a vanishing generation," said Uri Gutman, Israel's consul general in Shanghai, of the tens of thousands of Jews who lived in Shanghai before and during World War Two but dispersed to Australia, Israel or the United States in the late 1940s.
The database will give a record of the community, where its residents came from, their stories and struggles, where they have since moved and even how they might now be reached, Gutman said.
"It's like a historical mission," he told reporters at an event unveiling the database and an exhibit on Israel-China relations.
Thousands of Jews fled to China to escape the Nazis, establishing a community with schools and theatres in Shanghai's Hangkou District, at the time an impoverished section north of the city's famous riverfront Bund.
Many escaped with visas granted by Ho Fengshan, the Chinese consul-general in Vienna who continued issuing the documents en masse even after he had been ordered to desist by his superior, the Chinese ambassador in Berlin.
Manli Ho, Ho Fengshan's daughter, noted that Jews desperate to leave Austria after its annexation by Germany and the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938 faced daunting obstacles, with many lining up for three days outside the Chinese consulate to get visas.
She recalled her father saying: "On seeing the Jews so doomed, I saw it only natural to want to help."
"China should be proud there was a place that another people could seek refuge," she added.
The database project, funded by Israeli companies and housed at the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, a former synagogue in the Hangkou District, has collected 1,000 names so far and hopes the list will reach up to 30,000.
The project is in touch with Jewish communities in Australia, the U.S. West Coast and elsewhere seeking information, Gutman said, although it is racing against time as many Jews who lived in Shanghai are now in their 80s or older.
There was no decision yet on whether the historical database would eventually be made available online, he said.
Turning to the present day, however, Gutman acknowledged that Israelis, like many foreigners, were finding it more difficult to get Chinese visas.
Several foreign business organizations have recently complained about pre-Olympics visa curbs on foreigners entering the mainland from Hong Kong. "We feel it, but it doesn't affect trade," Gutman said.
(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
