"I was born in Berlin, Germany." "My father and mother had a fur business in Germany." "And I have a brother who was a year younger." "We lived very comfortable, had a nice life in Germany." "I remembered that huge, beautiful building... with gardens all around and a stream going through it." "I lived there with my grandmother." "I went to a Jewish school- a private school." "Had a nice girlfriend there, Anna-Marie... whom I was very friendly with, and we spent a lot of time together." "My sister went to another school." "She was older." "I had my dolls." "My mother made clothes for my dolls." "My father was a peddler in Germany which meant basically... he would go to a place and buy textiles... cut in three-yard length." "Then he'd go into villages and sell them door-to-door." "Usually when my father would return, if it was a successful trip... he brought back toys from the various villages, and that was exciting." "We used to go to the suburbs of Breslau on picnics." "In the winter we went to Czechoslovakia... to a place called Spindleruv Mlyn... where my parents went skiing and I went sleigh riding." "Jews in Germany felt at home and felt it was their vaterland... where they could live forever, and they felt at home with German culture." "They felt proud of Germany's achievement... and of Jewish contributions to Germany." "While on the one hand German Jews- especially when Hitler rose- started writing a spate of books called Jewish Contributions to Germany..." "Jewish Contributions to Civilizations- were not aware of the fact that the Germans looked at it quite differently." "Instead of saying, look how much we contributed to law... to journalism- created a whole new genre- to medicine and science... the Germans said, "You took over our science." "You took over our law." "You took over the newspapers. "" "In 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power in Germany." "They immediately acted on their ideology of racial discrimination and violence." "I came home from school... and the Nazi party was marching on the street... and everybody's standing on the side and saluting." "Suddenly they said" "That means "Hit the Jews. " They grabbed a few people and started beating them." "They were yelling, "We are no Jews." "We are no Jews. "" "They kept on beating them for the cameras that were set up." "Till one day, in the usual ice cream parlor... we couldn't go in anymore... and we were just beginning to learn how to read." "That's when the signs came up all over." ""No Jews, no dogs" in the stores." ""No Jews, no dogs" on the benches." "Couldn't quite understand what this was all about... but I remember my grandmother taking us by the hand and says, "Haroldchen. "" "That's how she used to call me." ""We can't go in here anymore." "We'll get ice cream some other place. "" "Yeah, this "Jews and dogs forbidden" was all over." "I had non-Jewish boys to play with... and then sometime- I don't remember what year it was- none of my non-Jewish friends... would play with me, talk to me- just disregard me." "My next memory actually was of our doorbell ringing at midnight." "I imagine it was shortly thereafter." "My parents wondering who's ringing the doorbell at midnight." "It was my uncle, my mother's brother." "He says, "I've got my chauffeur waiting downstairs." "I'm on my way to France via Switzerland... because it's the end for the Jews in Germany." "I think you should come with us. "" "He had always been a bit of an eccentric, this particular brother... so, when my father heard it, he says, "The meshuggener Leo." "What a crazy idea he has." "This madman's not gonna last." "Things like that have happened before to the Jews." "Impossible." "Besides, I fought in the First World War... and we've been German for generations." "We've lived here." "Let's wait and see. "" "In July, 1938..." "President Roosevelt convened the Évian Conference... to try and solve the refugee problem in Germany." "But the conference ended with no solutions." "The refugees had nowhere to go." "Every country was told at the Évian Conference... that they do not have to take more than their usual quota." "Britain won out in that Palestine was not mentioned as a haven." "Goebbels writes in his diary..." ""They are shedding crocodile tears." "They want us to do their job for them... and they really don't want the Jews as much as we don't. "" "So the Évian Conference showed Hitler... that the world didn't give a damn." "In 1938, a young Jewish man... enraged at the treatment of his parents by the Nazis... shot and killed a German diplomat in Paris." "The Nazis used the incident as a pretext to orchestrate violent riots against Jews." "Thousands of shops were looted and destroyed... and virtually all synagogues in Germany were burned." "Ninety-one Jews died, hundreds wounded." "The police were told not to interfere." "This night was called Kristallnacht." ""The Night of the Shattered Glass. "" "When the ninth of November came along... and the Nazis wanted to get into our house... the Hausmeister, who was a big Communist before 1933" "After 1933, of course, he became a big Nazi." "He was standing in front of the building in his uniform... and saying, "There are no Jews in this building." "Keep on going. "" "That saved us at that time." "My father put on the radio, and all he heard was martial music." "He went out." "He wasn't sure." "He didn't like to see what was happening." "He decided to go into hiding." "When we got out the next few days..." "I saw the glass... and the burning synagogues and all that." "We walked over to my grandmother's house to see if they were all right." "I remember the crunching glass under my feet." "Even now, more than 60 years later, I can still remember it." "The day after Kristallnacht, my parents and I walked out of our house... and the grocery store near us, which was owned by a Jewish family" "The windows were shattered and had "Dirty Jew" on it." "Then we walked to the synagogue which we attended... and as we walked by we saw in the courtyard of the synagogue... there was a mound of ashes." "It was clear that these were prayer books." "Sticking out of the center of the mound were the scrolls of the Torah." "I remember being terrified by that... because I had just learned... that if the Torah was dropped in the synagogue, even by accident... the whole congregation would have to fast for 40 days." "And here I saw the Torah is being burned." "Internally I said to myself..." ""There's no safety for us anywhere. "" "All of a sudden... almost all Germans sought a way out." ""Where can we go?" "Where can we find a haven?" "Where can we get out?"" "Of course, the lines on all the embassies and consulates... were blocks long with the attempts to find a haven." "The American consulate closed their doors... and no visas were ever given out again." "You couldn't get into America." "You couldn't get to England." "You couldn't get to any of these places because we had no passports, no visas." "The quota numbers were very small." "Among non-Jewish people that lived in our house... one of the men was a very high officer in the German air force... who warned my father not to stay in Europe." "He says, "We are going to conquer all of Europe. "" "My father fortunately felt the same way." "He was a peddler... and arranged with 11 other people... to pay someone to get him across the border to Belgium." "They did make it across the border... and they were picked up by the Belgian authorities... who turned them back to the Gestapo who turned them over to Dachau." "One of the ways in which the Austrian Jews were encouraged to leave... was to arrest the men... and incarcerate them... in concentration camps... and then saying, "The only way you're going to get your men back-"" "To these women who were left behind, the families that were left behind." ""The only way you can get them is if you leave within a month... 24 hours, two weeks, two months," or whatever they decided." "My father decided to come out of hiding." "It seems the Christian landlord told him, "Don't. "" "He went to the friend's house to pick me up." "It so happened the Gestapo was in the same house." "He got picked up, and he was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp." "I was picked up on the street... taken with all other Jews to Sachsenhausen." "We were standing there, and the command came out..." ""Anybody below 14 and over 80, step forward. "" "So, I was 13." "I stepped forward." "They put us on a truck, and they sent us back home." "I spent one day." "So, all of a sudden, there developed- first in Vienna- a haven that nobody dreamed of before." "There's a place you can go to without a visa, without papers." "It was extraordinary." "How could there be such a thing?" "It was hard to imagine." "Where are you going?" "8,000 miles away." "Shanghai... a sprawling port city on the east coast of China... was forced by the British to trade with the West... after the Opium Wars of the 1840s." "Powerful and decadent... tremendously wealthy and miserably squalid... voracious and corrupt... it became the commercial center of China." "To sustain their booming trade... the West created a section of the city where Western law ruled." "It was called the International Settlement." "Later on, the French created their own settlement called the French Concession." "The International Settlement... had grown up, since mid-19th century... outside of the walled town of Shanghai." "Shanghai was a town with walls around it... and the International Settlement grew up outside of it." "They built up those ports." "They built up all of them- not only Shanghai, but that was the biggest one- into a major world harbor... where the settlement created a tremendous boom." "There were two Jewish communities in Shanghai." "The first group came following the British during the late 19th century." "They were Baghdadi businessmen and their families." "As British subjects, they were able to take part in the booming Shanghai trade." "They were English-speaking." "They did business with the British." "They did very well by doing business with the British." "Some of them were enormously wealthy... like the Kadoorie... the Sassoon... and the Hardoon families." "The second community consisted of Russian Jews... who immigrated to China mostly to escape the Communist revolution in 1917." "Although not as affluent as the Baghdadi Jews... they also had a rich community life." "The Russian Jewish community which existed- the second one- grew up parallel but not identical... or mixed with the Sephardim." "They were separate and unequal." "In 1937.." "began the war to attack the Chinese garrisons... in the outskirts of China." "From that time began the Sino-Japanese War." "In the Sino-Japanese War of 1937.." "the Japanese conquered large parts of China... including Shanghai." "As it turned out, that was the only avenue of escape" "Shanghai- without papers." "All you needed really was passage on a ship." "What is not widely known, in '38, before the beginning of the war... you could get out of Dachau if you could leave the country." "If he could have left the country... he wouldn't have gotten smuggled into Belgium." "So, he was in Dachau for about 20 days." "During that time my mother found out... that you could go to the Japanese-occupied portion of Shanghai without a visa." "One did not need a visa to come to Shanghai." "But that is wrong." "Because visas were indeed required... in order to purchase a ship ticket." "Passport control, however... after July, 1937... was no longer in Chinese hands." "As a matter of fact, nobody controlled passports... because the foreign powers did not want to control passports... because then the Japanese would have said, "We want to control passports"... and the foreign powers... did not want the Japanese to control passports of foreigners... and therefore nobody controlled passports." "She decided to buy steamship tickets for Shanghai." "How did she have the money?" "It wasn't that easy either." "We had money, but the bank accounts were frozen." "However, we were allowed to draw household expenses from our own moneys." "So my mother inflated, as much as she was able to, what she needed... and was very frugal on spending it." "But she did go and get the steamship tickets... for leaving on the Hakozaki Maru... a Japanese steamer... the following February from Naples, Italy." "My father was always very careful with money." "He had money put aside." "Most of that went for... bribing the NYK Line people to give us tickets... because if we hadn't gotten out by the middle of May..." "I wouldn't be sitting here today." "I remember my grandfather" " It's one of those things that sits in your ear" "You hear it." "He used to say to her, "Fuffchen. "" "He called her Fuffchen." ""Where you taking the kid to?" "To the Chinesin. "" ""No, no." "Forget it. "" "He said, "Yeah." "I'm taking my boy." "I'm getting out. "" "On my mother's birthday, which was December 5, 6:00 in the morning... the bell rang... and at that time if you heard a bell ring at any hour... but particularly at an ungodly hour, you might say... it did not sound too good." "I remember all of us huddling in the little hallway... as my mother opened the door, and there was my father." "He had come home from Buchenwald." "With much trepidation, she told my father..." ""We're not waiting for a United States visa." "I got tickets to go to Shanghai. "" "She expected him to make a big fuss... and all he said was... in today's vernacular..." ""If we had left yesterday, it wouldn't be soon enough. "" "We left Germany in..." "1939 in May." "We said good-bye to my grandparents." "It was chaos." "My mother was screaming." "My aunt was screaming." "They were very volatile." "It was terrible." "Awful." "And, you know, the Germans never came out to say good-bye." "They watched from behind the curtains." "We could see them, and they didn't come out." "They knew my mother since she was a little girl." "They didn't come out." "They didn't say anything." "They were really terrified... and also probably glad to see us leave." "At the train station there was the whole family there." "I see it like you're sitting in front of me." "I see it like you're sitting in front of me." "Under Anhalter Bahnhofin Berlin." "Everybody." "Everybody." "Bruno." "Omi-Sozia, Ada, Mietek." "The cousins-Judith, Margot." "All names today are" "It's a long time ago." "But a lot of people." "A lot of people." "And they're all gone." "I had to say good-bye to Anna-Marie, my girlfriend... and all of that." "I give talks in schools... and I talk about Anna-Marie, especially to the age group that- the nine-year-olds, the 10-year-olds." "I always talk about Anna-Marie and say..." ""If you ever hear about anyone called Anna-Marie Wallenberg... let me know. "" "I get letters from them." "One little girl wrote a letter back, and she said..." ""Don't worry if you don't find Anna-Marie." "When you go to heaven, you'll find her there. "" "When the train reached the Italian border... and the Gestapo came on board the train... and my mother telling me..." ""I want you to be very quiet." "Don't say a word." "Don't look up." "Don't move." "Don't ask for anything." "Just sit. "" "Funny how kids sometimes know that it's really serious business." "I was eight years old, and I did just that." "So I remember the Gestapo coming aboard the train to check papers... but I didn't see faces 'cause I was looking down." "My mother told me not to look up." "All I saw was black boots marching back and forth... and them saying "Papiere, " you know, "papers. "" "The passports and whatever else was needed- the permission." "They went through the whole train... and after they got it from everybody, they left the train... and the train started again and crossed the border into Italy." "Everybody cheering and clapping." "They had champagne corks popping." "We were out of Germany." "Shanghai became a real option... for those Jews who had no place to go." "They scrambled to buy all the luxury ship tickets... to go to Shanghai... because that was the only way you can go at that point." "Got on the ship." "That was the Kashima Maru." "It was weird because it looked like a pleasure cruise... with the streamers and the music- the orchestra- a Japanese real snappy orchestra." "We thought we were on holiday, my sister and me." "I was nine, and she was 11." "So we had fun." "We had a stewardess who was assigned to take care of us... and they gave us little cakes and little dolls." "We had tea parties." "We took a ship in Naples- a Japanese ship by the name of Hakusan Maru." "It was a beautiful four-week trip." "Long, beautiful trip." "I enjoyed every moment of it." "I didn't realize really what was going on in the world." "We were too young for that." "My mother bought first-class passage." "So we had a relatively luxurious cabin... and there was more food than anyone could ever eat." "I remember vividly throughout the trip... my mother kept saying I should eat everything in sight." "At that time we were kosher." "We basically ate the fruits... and the vegetables and much of the pastry." "In Port Said, the ship actually anchored... and I remember those sand dunes on both sides." "They later told us that a few young Jews" "German Jews, Polish Jews- jumped the ship... and actually tried to make their way to Palestine." "What's Israel today." "I don't know." "There was a recurrent theme." "She was saying, "Eat, eat, eat"... because who knows what will happen when we get to Shanghai." "Got off the ship in Shanghai... if I remember correctly... that was the shock of a lifetime." "It was completely different from anything you could imagine." "Absolutely different." "Nothing could prepare you for what we saw there." "I actually remember feeling very, very afraid." "I didn't know where I was." "I t was a whole different world... in overnight from white to black or from black to white." "In 1937, what was conquered was not the International Settlement... not the French Concession... but the Chinese portion of the town." "The Japanese did not want to establish a concession of their own... but they took a piece of the International Settlement... and that they said is under our military control." "And that is Hongko." "Hongko- or Hongke was some called it- was one of the poorest sections of Shanghai." "Badly battered in the war with the Japanese... it was home to poor Chinese... occupying Japanese and many Jewish refugees... who had little means to support themselves." "We landed in Hongkew, which is the place where all the ships landed- particularly the refugee ships." "It was very dirty." "It was terribly hot and very humid." "The heat is terrible there." "And crowded and smelly." "Thousands of people running around." "Chinese beggars with open sores." "It was just awful." "Shanghai was not prepared for this kind of an influx- for these waves and waves... shiploads- shipload after shipload." "One of my father's friends who had gone there before us... had rented us a room... in one of the little lanes that they have in Hongkew." "The room was fairly clean... but it was just one small room for our family... another small one for my uncle and my aunt." "No kitchen facilities." "very poor bathroom situation." "No what they called WC's over there- water closet." "No flush toilets." "Buckets." "The first home was also on Wayside Road." "Further down on Wayside Road in a lane in an alley." "All of Shanghai was alleys and lanes." "Cars don't go through there." "Bicycles." "With a wagon you can pull through there." "Very narrow, very crowded, very tight." "Not too much air." "Not too much light." "That's how people lived in those days." "So, a major problem arose already in December at the very beginning:" "How to support these people, how to house these people... how to feed these people of already hundreds upon hundreds." "The Jewish Baghdadi families stepped in to help." "They established soup kitchens and temporary shelters called homes... or Hei me in German." "We were picked up by the Jewish Committee on trucks... and they took us to a camp... which was a converted school and a Kinchow camp." "The camp was normal." "We had a little breakfast, a little lunch and no dinner." "We had to fend for ourselves." "We had a little money." "The first one to create what you call the international committee- or I CU- was the COMA Committee... which was subsidized by Sassoon." "victor Sassoon said... that it was the cheapest place in the world to support a refugee." "For five American cents you could support a refugee." "But as more refugees were arriving daily, more help was needed." "The JDC- the Joint Distribution Committee- took action." "It was an overseeing organization of Jewish-American communities... uniting their philanthropic efforts." "The JDC was the main source of hope and help for the refugees." "It financed the temporary shelters... the soup kitchens and the makeshift hospital." "Later, Laura Margolis, an American professional social worker... became the JDC's head official in Shanghai." "Under her effective management... the JDC was able to sustain close to 10,000 refugees... who had no means to support themselves." "One morning... the phone rang." "The boss at that time was Mo Levitt." "Moses Levitt." "He said, "Laura, how you doin'?"" "Although "How you doin'?" was not an expression in those years." "But he said, "How are you?"" "I said, "Fine. "" ""Busy?" "Yeah, we're very busy here. "" "He said, "How would you like to go to China?"" "I have to laugh when I think of it." "I said, "Where in China?" "Shanghai. "" "I said, "Sure." "I'd like to go. "" "I had no idea what he was talking about." "She came in May, 1941." "She was a professional social worker... who had worked in Cuba before that." "I found a news clipping in the Joint archives... describing "Laura Margolis from Cuba... is coming to straighten out the mess in Shanghai. "" "Because you had the local relief organizations... by volunteers." "Laura Margolis, a highly intelligent woman... sent back weekly- sometimes even daily reports... describing precisely the situation as she saw it." "The relief organizations and how poorly they're managing... and the refugee problem and so on and so forth." "Now came the Polish Jews... and the Lithuanian Jews and the religious Jews and the yeshivot." "They wanted to be taken care of separately... because they were intellectuals... and they had to have their prayer books... and they had to have kosher food... and chicken on Friday." "It was very, very difficult." "Very difficult." "Yet again, the Jewish communities did try to accommodate them... did respond." ""These are religious people." "They need to be treated differently. "" "So we went to the camp kitchens... for our first meals like everybody else did." "They had set up these homes" " Heime- which didn't look much like Heim- or a home- for people who had no place to go." "They had kitchens, and they had a hospital." "Fortunately, we didn't have to live there." "That was even worse than living in the room- much worse." "It was kind of odd to see people there." "They all had these new German clothes they had bought before they left... if they had enough money left." "They were all decked out." "The men usually with hats and suits." "In that heat." "The women with nice suits and heels and all that... with a tin plate in their hand, waiting for food from the communal kitchen." "The summers would get so hot... that today you use a heat index or humidity index." "Under those conditions, the temperature could go up as much- measured that way- 140 in the shade." "The sanitary conditions were about the worst in the world that you can think of." "Every disease- known or unknown to man- was rampant in epidemic proportions." "Non-flushable toilet." "A Chinese woman would come every morning... pick that huge pot up... take it down the stairs and dump it into a wagon in the street." "So the street usually smelled not like Chanel Number 5." "You could not drink the water." "In Shanghai, at the time, you could not drink." "You drank water, guaranteed to get sick." "The older generation." "But when you were young, you do things." "I remember distinctly the first time I drank the water from the tap." "You had to boil the water." "Eventually we were able- most of the younger people- to drink the water from the tap." "There was a way to do the rice that I remembered... and I usually tell that to people- how my mother used to put it out on the windowsill." "We had these wide windowsills." "If you left it sitting there for four or five minutes... the bugs would come crawling out." "My sister and I would count who had the most." "In summertime... the river would overflow on a regular basis." "Everyday, at certain hours, the streets were flooded." "You'd have swimming in there." "You name it, and it was swimming in there." "Most of the refugees came almost penniless to Shanghai." "The German government had confiscated most of their assets." "Many sold whatever salable items they had- clothes and furniture... which they brought from Europe in large crates called "lifts. "" "The refugees now scrambled to find jobs in Shanghai to sustain themselves... although they did not know for how long." "My father had studied to be a typewriter mechanic before leaving Germany." "Also with the proceeds of what my mother sold... we established a typewriter business in the British foreign settlement... hiring a Chinese mechanic." "My mother stayed home." "She and my aunt knitted." "They opened up the old sweaters and the old shawls... and knitted for sale to make a little money." "My father and my uncle went to look for jobs in the city of Shanghai... with Chinese companies." "My father got a job with a chemical company... knowing absolutely nothing- not a shred of knowledge about chemicals." "But he learned." "He used to study every night." "She supported her husband and myself... with making hats." "She was an excellent hat maker." "Since the climate was cold, people wore hats." "The hope was always... create a temporary refuge so they can get to America... or elsewhere in the western hemisphere" "Canada, South America." "Nobody expected Shanghai to be a refuge for 10 years." "It was unintended to be more than anything temporary." "As bad as were offing Shanghai... we were still better off than most of the Chinese around us." "The Chinese were very poor, very hardworking... and were under direct oppression of the Japanese." "The poorer Chinese people... lived even... a poorer life than the Jewish refugees, it seemed." "The relief organization helped the refugees- the Jewish refugees- according to their standard." "The Chinese had this coexistence with the refugees- a sort of benign tolerance." "They had their own problems." "They kind of accepted us in their midst there." "I never once saw a sign of anti-Semitism... or disgust or criticism." "I never saw it at all." "The lot of the Chinese people was a very hard one to watch... beginning with the coolies- these poor guys who were carrying all daylong... and then the rickshaws." "A human being lugging a little wagon with two wheels... and rich people and running with them through the streets for hours and days... with the veins popping out of their legs." "It's inhuman." "The wintertime, there was no heating... and some just froze to death." "Then you'd see in the streets in the morning... little packages wrapped up where the children passed away... and they wrapped them up in a little straw mattress... and when the garbage truck came, they just picked them up." "Children play with other children." "It doesn't matter whether" "My sister writes in her diary..." ""I gave the little Chinese girl next door a piece of white bread. "" "Big deal, you know." "That's the way this worked." "Herfather gave me a pencil." "That's how these things evolved." "They didn't make lifelong friendships out of this... but they coexisted quite well." "So there was never" "We were lucky with that." "After all, we were sitting on their territory... 20,000 of us pushing20,000 of them out... because they were already there... and overflowing, living really in poverty, many of them." "Because that was the poor section of town." "On the one hand, the white and the Chinese were simply two different worlds." "very few understood Chinese or spoke Chinese." "What refugees had a lot to do with Chinese was in pidgin English." "They bought from them." "They bought the cheapest- the last bit of vegetables... and what was left in the stands when nobody else would buy... when they couldn't afford anything else." "Sometimes the Chinese were very good to the refugees." "They gave them credit, or they let them buy on credit." "There was this very sweet Chinese man... who came with his bamboo stick with two little baskets hanging on each side... and became a real friendship with my mother." "Used to come by- I don't know about everyday- but very often- a good few times a week." "Then he'd be downstairs- We lived on the second floor- and he used to call, "Ufi." "Ufi, " and then my mother went down." "He had some vegetables... or fish and some chicken." "He always had something that she bought from him." ""Ufi. " She was his best customer." "In Shanghai... there was a Russian newspaper... for the Russian community." "And in this paper there was a Yiddish page." "In that Yiddish page... they recorded their reaction to Shanghai." "It is the most beautiful, heartwarming poetry that I've read." "I mean, it is just" "It's not self-pitying." "Some of the poems are sort of reaching out to the Chinese population." "Like, "Oh, my God." "This is terrible what is happening to you. "" "This kind of sympathetic response." "So it comes straight from the heart." "Instead of saying, "Oy, poor me. "" "You know, " Gevalt!" "Who did this to me?"" "They're saying, "Oh, no." "You poor Chinese. "" "The utmost influence... the Jews asserted... on the Shanghai Chinese society... was on music and on medicine." "The Chinese themselves, many of them felt also sympathy for the Jews." "They're both being oppressed by the Japanese." "The Chinese worse." "When the Chinese crossed a bridge they had to bow down... and Japanese sometimes stick 'em with a burning cigarette... or jab them." "But the Chinese got the better part of it." "They turned around and smiled." "And that killed the Japanese." "In other words, their smile" "In other words, they withstood the torture and the embarrassment... and said you-know-what to them in that language." "That hurt the Japanese more than anything else." "Every Chinese hated the Japanese very much." "Theykilled300,000people... when they occupied Nanjing." "I saw once... a Chinese stealing a canister of kerosene... and he was caught." "Right on the spot the Japanese tied up his hands... and chopped them off." "And that's it." "I couldn't watch." "I ran away." "But in my opinion, man could never survive." "Although passport control was not in anyone's hands after 1937... the Japanese controlled the Shanghai harbor." "In spite of their alliance with Germany... they let the Jewish refugees into Shanghai." "I t is quite clear that they do not wish to antagonize American Jews." "They do not wish to antagonize world Jewry... because this stereotype of the Jew, which is still alive today in Japan... was very much alive then." "Jews are rich, Jews have power..." "Jews control governments." "Jews are compared to a blowfish or fugu." "If the skilled chef... can know how to cut the little poisonous sac out of the fish, it's a delicacy." "If not, it's a poisonous thing." "If we have such a great power like the Jews... we have to know how to utilize them on behalf of Japan." "Japanese had to be very careful... about being prejudiced against Jews... because they had complained... about German prejudice against Asians." "So, it was the Japanese, Hitler's Axis partner... that determined, based on their concept of what the Jew was in the world- on their control of the West... and Western Jews being synonymous in their ideas" "they thought, "If we are good to the Jews in East Asia, they will be good to us. "" "Meanwhile, war was raging in Europe." "In September, 1939, Germany invaded Poland." "In 1940, Denmark." "Then the Netherlands, Belgium... then France." "It seemed like Hitler was unstoppable." "The beginning looked like total devastation- we don't have a chance." "The Germans were running across Europe... and the Japanese were storming all across Asia." "Till things started turning around, we didn't really know." "It looked hopeless." "We got once a postcard from my grandfather." "We tried in Shanghai... to get some of my mother's family out... or my father's, but it was too late." "You had to go via Siberia, and as I said to you... the war was on already, and you could not come anymore." "My other uncle, though- Leo who had gone to Paris- when he saw that it wasn't that great in France... he wrote my mother he'd like to come to Shanghai." "My mother immediately got things moving." "The European part of HIAS was called HICEM." "H-I-C-E-M." "She went to the HICEM... in Shanghai... and sent papers." "At that particular time... you needed- it wasn't really sponsors... but you needed somebody to write a letter to say you wanted somebody to come." "It was very easy." "It was a semiofficial kind of thing." "There was no problem." "We did the same thing." "The HICEM took care of it." "And we got another letter from my uncle... that he was now interned at Septfonds." ""Please get me out as quickly as you can. "" "My mother couldn't understand." "Why didn't he get the papers?" "She went to the HICEM, and he assured her the papers were sent." "Well, nothing happened, and finally my mother got very upset... and she went back to the HICEM, and she says..." ""You know, it doesn't take that long for papers to get to Europe." "Something must have happened. "" "The man said, "No." "We sent them. " "I want the receipt... because you said you sent them registered mail." "I want the receipt that you sent them. "" "They weren't very nice to her, but she wouldn't leave the office." "Finally he took out his file... and the way she said, his face blanched." "She said, "What's the matter?" He said, "The papers were never sent." "They're in this file. "" "So, my mother says..." ""I'm gonna take the papers, and I will send them. "" "She took the papers, 'cause they had to go to the HICEM in Marseille... and they he could have gotten on a ship." "She took the papers... and she immediately sent them out, registered mail." "They got to the HICEM in Marseille the day France fell." "They never reached my uncle." "To the day she died... my mother said, "Leo's gonna think his sister deserted him... that his sister didn't want him to come. "" "She always spoke about that- how she sent him these papers." "They were overworked, I guess- the HICEM." "She always says, "Why didn't I ask to see the file earlier?" "Why, why?"" "Because he could have come." "There were various schools available in Shanghai... including French and British schools." "There was also the Kadoorie school in Hongkew." "It was built and financed by the Kadoorie and Sassoon families for the refugees... and was staffed by refugee teachers." "There was also an existing school:" "the Shanghai Jewish School... which was administered by these two families... the Sassoon and Kadoories." "It was a private school." "You had to pay tuition" "If you could not pay tuition, you went for free." "It was a school run under the British school system." "The curriculum was made up in Cambridge, England... was sent to Shanghai, meticulously followed." "Examination papers were sent back to Cambridge for marking... and then returned to Shanghai." "There were kosher lunches... and there was a big, beautiful Sephardic synagogue, still in existence today... on the grounds of the Shanghai Jewish School." "Had a very, very lovely English lady... in our Shanghai Jewish School" "Mrs. Beresford- who every weekend... would take from her class... one kid to her house." "I remember I was there twice." "Her son was a boy named Maxwell Beresford." "That was in downtown Shanghai." "They were beautiful- beautiful woman, beautiful people- and for two days you lived again in a different world." "When we kids had nothing to do... in the afternoon, after school... we got active and we had athletic competitions." "We had a soccer league, where we played soccer every weekend." "There also was a small boxing club... because there were some Jews from Germany" "Some of them were champion of Germany." "They had a little time on their hands... and they started to teach us to be boxers." "We had a very good boxing league." "I was pretty good." "I was very good at boxing." "I had a very strong right." "I won most of my fights by knockout." "Now as a man of72 years old... it doesn't look the same and it doesn't feel the same... but I was very strong and I was very good." "So were others in our group." "They were really good." "We had good trainers and we trained very hard." "We took enormous pride to win." "All of us wore the Magen David, which was important." "When you're always on the bottom, and everybody spits and laughs at you... you are finally on even keel- It was important." "Here you have a community... that despite these disadvantages that I mentioned to you... created a viable cultural life... that would have done justice to a city of 100,000." "Newspapers, dailies, weeklies, monthlies" "An incredible array of newspapers." "Of course one person bought it... then gave it out to 10 other people to read." "These were read and read and reread until they were torn." "From Vienna, the sausages and bakery and other things" "The café house, which was a standard in Vienna and Germany... they brought to Shanghai." "Architects created a whole new area... where the bombed-out part of Hongkew had been rebuilt... to create apartments, rooms for refugees." "They created a theater, and this included a German theater and a Yiddish theater." "They had cabaret evenings in these little restaurants... that were fabulous." "We would go there" "Once in a great while my father would come out... with enough money for us to go to one of these places." "We would go there, and we'd listen to them sing and make jokes." "People like Herbert Zernik and Raya Zomina- she sang in Yiddish." "These two were so funny, and they were so good." "There was a lot of that going on." "You have this attempt... to bring some kind of cultural life." "It's not only the café houses." "It's not only recreating Little Vienna or Little Berlin... as some people have written." "It is much more." "Several newspapers- The Gelb Reports, Shanghai Chronicle" "Many more that stopped and started." "Even books." "Poetry." "People were writing wonderful poetry in German... not only in Yiddish." "It is that kind of thing which I think is moving." "Among the squalor, the poverty, the hunger... and this feeling of, "What's going to be with us?" "Where will all this end?" "Will it ever end?"... there still is the human spirit reasserting itself." "The Jewish refugees built... an almost self-sufficient, beautiful society." "There's sports clubs, there's soccer clubs... there are recreation clubs, there are boxers." "It's an amazing story." "My father had come out of Buchenwald... where his war wound had acted up and had not been treated." "He got sick, then he got well, then he got sick." "He got checkups." "They didn't know what it was." "They pulled his teeth, they thought it was that." "He kept getting fevers, and it was called "Shanghai Fever. "" "But he functioned and ran the business with a Chinese mechanic." "My mother went knocking on doors getting customers." "She did the bookkeeping, she did the correspondence and appointments." "My father did the repairs together with a Chinese mechanic." "Then he got sick again... and he died, just like that." "He was 43years old." "They were never sure what it was... but they presume it was some kind of a parasite... that he harbored from Buchenwald." "When he fought in the First World War... he was at the Battle of Verdun in France... which was a very big, important battle." "I think it was in 1916." "He was born in 1897... so he was about 19 years old." "He was a kid, really." "As he was standing with his gun... he sees a young French soldier... on the other side of him, opposite him." "That's the enemy... so naturally you shoot your enemy or he's gonna shoot you." "My father tells the story." "He sees this French soldier... and he raises his gun to shoot him." "At the same moment that he's shooting the soldier... the soldier shoots him." "And as my father fell- He had a stomach wound, lying there- he heard the young French soldier say, "Shema Israel. "" "That always affected him." "He killed a Jew." "All of a sudden, he wasn't a German soldier killing a French soldier... it was a Jew killing a Jew." "It affected him all his life." "It must have, because he always told that story... and then my mother repeated it." "Although the situation in Shanghai was bad... it was far better than Europe, where war was still raging." "The refugees felt relatively safe in Shanghai under Japanese occupation." "That was about to change." "In December, 1941..." "Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor." "The United States entered the war." "Pearl Harbor was not only a major shock... which verified to some that the Gestapo had a long arm... and it reached out to the Far East." "It was a double shock." "Here they thought, "We have difficulties, but we're out of danger from Germany. "" "All of a sudden, with Pearl Harbor they find Germany and Japan are allies... and Germans again are involved in their affairs." "We got very frightened." "With America at war, we're not going to get out of Shanghai." "Looked out the window... and all the ships in the harbor were burning." "Japanese had come across the bridge... marched into our hotel, occupied the hotel." "We were at war." "The Japanese quickly took over the International Settlement." "The British and the Americans were now enemies of Japan... and were regarded as prisoners of war." "The Japanese imprisoned them... in internment camps at the outskirts of Shanghai." "That group included the Baghdadi Jews who were also British subjects." "The Sephardic community, which had been helping the refugees... was no longer in the elite position that they were before." "They themselves were reduced... as to how much money they could take out of the bank." "Most of their money was confiscated." "Within three quarters of a year or so- certainly by the end of the year- all the enemy aliens- meaning American, British and Dutch nationals- were interned." "I remember when they locked all the British up." "A few of our guys" " I was with them- knew where the camp was." "Long way to walk, the way I remember it today." "We gathered whatever we could steal- some cans, some this, some that." "We walked for kilometers, the way I remember it." "We brought them some." "They were all locked up in the British camp." "We paid back." "With America at war with Japan... all lines of communication between Shanghai and the US were suddenly cut." "Laura Margolis was cut off... without money coming from America to support the soup kitchens... the local shelters and the makeshift hospital." "Foreseeing such a problem, she had already obtained permission from the JDC... to borrow money from local businessmen... who were confident that they would be repaid by the JDC... at the end of the war, as indeed they were." "But without the Japanese approving the operation... everything could fall apart... leaving thousands of refugees with no means to support themselves." "So I phoned up Captain I nuzuka." "He remembered me... because we had been to social affairs together... and received me very nicely." "Made the tea ceremony, very nice, very cordial." "Then we got to the nitty-gritty of what I came for." "It's true that I'm an enemy alien." "I don't know what's going to happen with me next." "But for the foreseeable future, apparently I'm free." "I would be able to take over the whole operation in Shanghai... and keep feeding the people... if he would give me permission to raise the money." "I said..." ""You, as an occupying power... can not afford to have hungry people riot." "You're responsible for them." "On the other hand..." "I can help you so they won't riot... if you'll give me an okay... to raise the money. "" "And he did." "The war years were very difficult years... in the sense that there wasn't enough food... and everybody had dysentery." "Having diarrhea was just usual." "Food got to be very difficult in '43, '44, '45." "There wasn't a lot of food." "Lot of people were clearly suffering from malnutrition." "You had a sense- As a young kid, I remember... the people were shrinking into their clothes." "They looked gaunt and shabby." "Little Chinese boys would be chasing grocery trucks." "They'd have a knife." "They'd cut a hole in the sack." "The noodles would fall into the gutter." "They'd sweep them up, and they would be sold very cheaply." "Then my mother and I would sit around the kerosene lamp... or whatever was available in the way of light... and we'd separate the noodles from the debris." "Debris being broken glass, rusty nails, stones- whatever is swept up from a gutter." "I remember we were sitting on the balcony once" "Werner, my second father, and I- Tiny little balcony." "My mother was in the streets." "She had just bought bread." "And we saw some young kid came up... grabbed the bread from her arm and started running." "When she came up, she said, "He must have been even hungrier than we are. "" "Those were" "There wasn't much of anything." "Since the Baghdadi Jews were imprisoned in internment camps with the British..." "Laura Margolis called upon the Russian Jews to help the refugees." "The responsibility for the refugees... fell now on the Russian Jews." "And I would say" "They had no choice, but we accept the responsibility." "But also they did their best." "They cannot be faulted." "After that, they simply had to do whatever was possible." "My parents and quite a few other people... had their kids go to a Catholic school." "Saint Francis Xavier's College- SFX- which was an all-boys school." "Discipline extremely strict." "If I learned anything at all, that's where I learned it." "It was a Catholic school." "All brothers, with the long black gowns." "Religious Catholics from all over the world" "Brother Leo, Brother Ladislaus from Hungary." "There was one big redhead, Brother John." "I'll never forget... every morning when we walked into school..." "Brother John would give us... a little insight into what the political situation was." "He was very, very anti-Allies." "He was very much pro-German and pro-Japanese." "He was a real nice guy." "He was very nice, especially to us Jewish kids... and yet... his actions showed different and the words that came out of his mouth were different." "After the war was over... it came out that Brother John was actually a very high officer in the British army." "He was no brother." "Not a religious man, but set up in there." "Apparently he was one of those... that gave a lot of information of what was going on in Shanghai... as far as the the Japanese army was concerned, to the Allied forces." "The refugee community was very worried what was happening... because after all the enemy aliens of Japan and Germany were interned... what was gonna happen to us?" "Knowing that Jews were always first in line... when it came to bad things happening to good people, so to speak... what did they have in store for us?" "On February 18, 1943... the Japanese issued a proclamation... ordering all stateless refugees who came to Shanghai after 1937.." "to move to a segregated area in Hongkew." "That's when the German influence became much more crucial." "German influence pressured the Japanese into creating a ghetto." "This was the tendency of the Japanese in ruling." "Here this whole puppet-state concept comes into play." "If you have them nice and compact all together... you can watch them and you know what they're doing." "Then what you do is you give them... someone to watch over them." "No direct rule." "That's the puppet government that watches over them." "It's exactly what they did in Shanghai." "It wasn't a real ghetto." "It wasn't a ghetto that we know from Europe." "It wasn't that." "It was a different concept." "It was a very Japanese concept." "And yes, all foreigners need to be watched." "The ghetto didn't have any walls around." "It didn't have to... because if you saw a European face in downtown Shanghai... and they were not German or Russian, they had to be one of us... because all the Americans and all the British were put into internment camps." "So we moved into that ghetto area." "My mother sold a bunch of the possessions we had just to make room." "We had a very tiny room." "There were at the end- three, four, six- ten people in this house." "We lived in a Chinese house owned by a Jew... but there were five families in a ghetto... and we had the attic which was like this." "We were not able to stand straight, only in the middle of the attic." "On the side it went all the way down." "The major problem we had was my brother contracted polio in China... which was a disaster." "Food was scarce." "Eventually we couldn't get out from the ghetto anymore... so I started a job." "I worked in the kitchen." "The school had a kitchen." "We all had to move into one room to 51 Chusan Road... which was right smack in the middle of the ghetto." "They never called it a ghetto." "They called it a segregated area... but it was a ghetto." "I went back there too... and took a look." "Yes." " We lived upstairs, you know?" " There you go." "Take care." " Be careful on the steps." " Take care." "Yes, on the steps." "It all comes back." "It all comes back." "The roof looks the same." "It's amazing how it didn't change." "I can't believe it." "We used to have the rice on this windowsill... and take the bugs out of the rice" "my sister and me." "There was another window and we had a little kitchen... where there's now a wall here... with one little stove, two rings of gas." "We never used it because we didn't have enough gas." "And a little sink with cold water running." "We put a curtain across it... so that nobody would come in when we washed ourselves." "Never took a bath during the war, just sponge bath... 'cause the bathroom down the hall was so dirty." "Everything comes back." "We did everything in this room." "We lived here... we slept here, we argued here." "I learned to dance in this room with my father... to the radio." "Voice of America." "We tried to get it, but it was forbidden... so we had to be very careful." "My mother always had flowers on the table." "You could buy flowers." "All the time we were wondering what happened in Germany." "We didn't know what was going on... all during the war." "It's just amazing how it all comes back." "To exit the ghetto for jobs or school... the refugees had to get special passes." "The Japanese authorities were represented by two officials;" "Akura and Goya." "Goya" " They called him "Meshuggener Goya" or "Paranoid Goya"- who had a" "He was really schizophrenic in many ways." "I'm giving you not a professional evaluation." "He could be very good to the children." "He'd give out candies to children." "He loved to play music, even though he was a lousy musician." "He always forced the refugees to play with him." "He liked to be called "King of the Jews. " He was a short, ugly fellow." "He would stand on the desk and yell at some Jews." "There was one Jew who really caught his psychology." "A brilliant idea." "He saw the kind of person he was." "He had a silk top hat he'd put on." "He gambled." "He'd say, "You're making fun of me?"" "He wore a silk hat when he went down the line to get a pass." "He said, "No, I only wear it... when I meet royalty and important people. "" "He caught onto the psychology of that person... and he was always put in front of the line." "Anytime he came, he got his pass immediately." "Mr. Goya was a very short, little man... and my stepfather Werner was a very tall man." "He was about 6 foot 2, 6 foot 3." "The little Japanese man didn't like that." "So he pulled out his gloves... and he slapped my father across the face." "He jumped on the table and slapped him across the face... and yelled at him to get out and "no pass. "" "I remember Werner coming home that day... and he was a shattered, broken man." "So now my mother's typewriter business... definitely was down the drain altogether... because many refugees now were not just dying of disease... they were dying of starvation, because there was so little food around." "And what she decided was a ruse." "She wrote to one of her customers in the French Concession, a French lady... and asked her to send a letter... saying that she was still servicing her typewriter." "The lady wrote that letter." "Armed with that letter... she made an application for a special pass with Mr. Goya." "She stood in front of Goya, and Goya said, "You repair typewriters?"" "She says, "Yes, I was in business." "My husband died here, but it was his business originally." "I still know how to repair them. "" "She got a pass, and armed with that pass... she decided what she was gonna do." "She had no intention of servicing typewriters." "She got a pass to go to the French Concession." "What she did that was not legal... she got off the tram before she got to the French Concession." "She went to the parts of the city... where Westerners did not go, the Chinese parts." "She bought up sundries like sunglasses... nylon stockings, belts, scarves, stuff like that." "She would put them under the toolbox that she carried with her... and bring them back to the ghetto area... and then give them to the peddlers on consignment in the ghetto." "Even though it didn't bring in much money... it brought in just enough... to keep us slightly above the starvation level." "One night when my parents thought I was asleep... they were talking to one another... and my mother said that there were only $17 left." "I had no idea what 17- It was a fair amount of money... but it was clear that when that was gone... we would be in terrible shape." "We had what they called a "paocha"... so the Japanese didn't have to do it... and we were happy they didn't have to do it." "Everybody was assigned a couple of hours a week... where you got an official armband and a stick... and you were standing and controlling... that the people don't go out without a pass- out of the ghetto without a pass" "and that they came in on time." "But as I said to you, I worked for Russians... and there was a Russian club." "The Jews that had Soviet passports could live outside the ghetto." "They had the radio and everything... and they got movies of the war going on with Germany." "The way to get back into the ghetto after the hour" "What I did is" "The ghetto did not have a wall around it." "This side of the street was the ghetto, the other side was not the ghetto." "So I walked on the other side of the street which was not the ghetto." "There was one street where the police station was." "Just as I came to the police station..." "I walked across the street and into the police station." "If anybody would ask, I'm going in to the police... but then I looked around, said, "I think I'm in the wrong place"... and I walked out again." "This was maybe 10:00 at night." "Anywhere else I walked... they would have caught me going into the ghetto at 10:00." "I was supposed to be home by 6:00." "There was this White Russian boy." "He was good friends with the Japanese kids there." "Whenever he got a hold of me, I got my daily" "If I couldn't run fast enough, I got my daily beating." "I remember one time I came home, my mother almost fainted." "A black eye and bleeding, no shirt, one shoe missing" "I took a bad beating." "George was his name." "Family name's not important." "George and his gang, always two or three guys." "They get you." "I used to go to bed at night, I remember that vividly... and I'd say, "Someday, I don't know, I will get even." "I have to get even." "This can't go on. "" "I took a beating maybe three or four times a week." "They'd catch you, you'd get it." "Butter was very valuable, very expensive." "I recall that my parents" "Later on there wasn't any butter, but my parents in '43, '44... would buy half a quarter of butter, two ounces... and they would watch and make sure that I ate it." "I remember once, vividly... walking out where my mother was washing the dishes." "I noticed that she licked the last bit of butter off the plate." "Till we moved into our" "Can't say a flat" "Till we moved into a room of a larger flat... which was shared... by probably four or five families- 11, 12 people all in all." "We had one room in there." "Bathroom facilities, if you can call it that... shared by about 11, 12 people, if I remember correctly." "In that one room, my mother made hats... and that's where we lived and slept and worked." "I can't explain." "I don't think people today... will understand what this is all about unless you see it." "Here we had our windows painted black... and if a little light would shine out... the Japanese would be cursing from the streets." "I don't want to tell you what they cursed." "I could repeat it if I wanted to." "They used to yell from down there, Bagero!" "If a little light shone out, they'd come smashing the doors in." "So we made sure the windows were all blacked... with shmattes covering so nothing would shine out." "Werner and Fufi would lie under the blanket at night." "They had a tiny little radio" " I don't know where they got that one from- and all covered up, they'd listen to the news." "Fufi understood a little Russian... so they used to listen to the news in Russian- what happened in World War II." "We'd hear from the Soviet Union... that the Russian armies had started turning things around... and pushing the Germans back." "That gave us a little bit of hope- gave us a little bit of hope for the future." "It didn't all seem that bleak in those days." "Otherwise, that's about it." "From here we went to school, here we came home after we got beat up." "This room has a lot of history." "My mother was a very fine lady." "She made big pots of soup with all sorts of things inside... and then she fed another three or four people... who came for lunch on a steady basis." "There was a painter, Kurt Frankenstein." "There was a Mr. Rouget who in turn taught me Russian for the food he ate." "There was another gentleman whose name I forget right now." "We always had three people... eating the same soup every day for lunch." "I remember them." "Yeah, my mom was a nice lady." "She was a good gal." "In the place where we worked, we had a map... and every day... we put pins in for the advances of the Russian army... or the German" "We had the news through the Russian club." "We had the newspaper in the ghetto, in German." "And the official news came through." "The victorious German army withdrew from Harkoff." "We knew they got kicked out of Harkoff." "Shanghai, apart of the Japanese empire... was under attack by American forces, mostly by air." "So far up to this point..." "Shanghai itself had not been bombed." "There were strafings." "We'd see Japanese and American fighter planes up in the sky." "Kids have no fear." "We'd be up on the roof." "We'd bet with marbles who would shoot down whom... as shrapnel was falling all around us." "When I think of it now, how foolish." "We could have gotten killed." "But nobody ever got hurt by that." "I don't know." "We must have been immune." "They would push the dining room tables together... and put mattresses on top and we would crawl underneath... and that was supposed to be a shelter." "It was July 17, 1945." "My mother was on one of her illegal forays in the city." "I was on my way to see Sue and Chaya, who were living together." "They lived on the exact opposite end of the ghetto from where I lived." "It was a very, very hot summer day... and in Shanghai the clouds used to hang... just a couple hundred meters above your head." "You would choke." "There was an air raid alarm in the morning... and then it was called off." "I think two or three times and called off." "I remember I went to a haircut." "I'm walking down the road... and I stopped" "Next to the prison was a hospital." "And that hospital had become a prison hospital... for American and British POWs." "They always had them out on a balcony on a top floor... which was maybe the fifth or sixth floor." "We used to stop there and wave to them." "Sure they must have been wondering who we were." "They used to wave back and we'd wave to them." "Suddenly you thought the world was coming to an end." "Absolutely the world" " Afterwards they said it was about a hundred B-29s... over Shanghai, just over the clouds." "That's a" "That's a ear-cracking noise." "It is unbearable." "Just as I'm starting to continue to walk over there... the dreaded siren went off that the city was under attack." "No bomb shelter, but a trench." "Jumped into a trench with some other people... and within a split second the bombs were flying." "And then the bombs started flying." "The bombs, when they go down, they go" "You hear that whistle." "I'll never forget that whistle... right before the thud." "We were always taught when the bombs start falling... you take an inside post of the building." "Never stand in the middle." "So everybody ran, grabbed some inside post of a building." "People screaming, and then you heard the sirens of the ambulances." "It was over very, very quickly." "Then we started running home." "Thirty-one refugees died, as well as hundreds of Chinese... in an attack by American forces... trying to hit a Japanese radio station in Hongkew." "The Japanese were terrific." "They had supplied the ghetto hospital... with medications and emergency equipment... in the event there would be a disaster." "They had the ambulances." "They came and they took care of everything immediately." "Didn't matter whether you were Chinese or white or green or yellow." "We had shrapnel coming into the window of the room where we lived... on my sister's bed, actually." "On her pillow." "And I kept that piece for many, many years." "You could see the evidence of the destruction all over the place." "There were shells of houses... and you could see that only walls had remained where houses had been." "and there was rubble strewn everywhere." "I n the afternoon we went for a walk around the district... and that was devastating." "Dead bodies, blood, this, that" "I remember I couldn't fall asleep for a whole month." "I used to sit in bed all night long with nightmares... and I couldn't fall asleep." "I couldn't do my schoolwork." "My head was just not there anymore." "Then we heard about the first atomic bomb... on Hiroshima, then on Nagasaki." "We said, "Oh, my God." "They're now going to drop it on Shanghai. "" "It was a terrible fear for us... because we knew Shanghai was a military target." "Otherwise, why would there be strafings on the outskirts?" "After the war was over, it suddenly got very quiet on the streets." "That was in August when that part of the war was over." "It got very quiet out there and the Japanese soldiers were gone." "We looked out through the blackout curtains... and there was nobody out there." "We waited a while to see if it was safe... and then we went out and there was nothing." "They were gone from the check posts around the ghetto." "They were out of there." "That's when we found out that it was over." "And when the war was over... we were in good shape." "We're strong kids, played a lot of soccer." "I went out to the streets." "Everybody was running wild." "The Jews- Suddenly, everything opened up." "I went out and two buddies came with me." "I went to look for George Bremen." "George Bremen saw me from a block away... and he knew this was the end, and he started running." "But I ran like a wild animal... so he couldn't have gotten away from me, no way." "I got a hold of George Bremen, and I was never a violent kid." "If those two guys would not have been with me" "I probably lost my mind." "I probably would have killed him." "I let out three, four years of anger... lots of pain." "I hit him with everything I could... and if those two boys weren't there, I probably would have killed him... because I lost all humanity at that time too." "After the war was over... the Red Cross released lists of surviving family members in Europe." "The refugees rushed to see who survived." "Few did." "Soon after, news of what happened in Europe reached the refugees." "I remember we got a few letters... from the Warsaw ghetto, which I have... where my Uncle Mietek... wrote to his sister, my mother... if there's anything she can do to help us get out of the Warsaw ghetto... and of course there was nothing to do." "There was nothing to do." "I have some of the letters in Polish, in German." "They're very sad letters... of "Help us get out of here," but there was nothing my mother could do." "A completely lost situation." "And those were the last letters." "I always admired the people that resisted." "I've taught my children that." "I thought by being an athlete, showing a different way of a Jew... that I contributed something... that we Jews are different and it can never happen again." "It won't happen again." "I will have nothing to do with Germany." "Germany decimated my whole family." "Germany changed my whole life." "My father who fought for the country" "In my mind, they murdered him." "I have no aunts and uncles that I know of." "I grew up without cousins." "My mother had a very difficult life." "Everything was taken away from her." "I can't forget that." "Jewish life continues... which is not guaranteed, unfortunately." "I always say that if my grandchildren don't grow up Jewish..." "Hitler won the war." "And it's a problem." "Anti-Semitism never bothered me as much as assimilation." "Most of the rest of the family... that I'd gotten to know from our yearly visits" "I spent a month or two in Poland every summer- did not survive." "When we heard about the concentration camps..." "I remember vividly... that my only recollection of some of the people that did not survive... were things that I was very unhappy about." "That was long before I learned about survivor guilt... because there was the feeling of we had survived and they had not." "I remember the last time I saw" "One of my cousins who lived in Dembitz... and his mother and I understand his father survived" "I was always very jealous of him." "He was clearly the brightest of all the cousins." "We must have had eight, nine cousins." "When we get together, he could solve any puzzle and stump the rest of us." "But he was physically somewhat more awkward than I... and I remember vividly that the last time we got together..." "I had a big fight with him... and his eyeglasses were broken." "I remember when I heard after the war that he had not survived... that was the only memory that kept coming back to me." "How could I possibly have fought with him the last time I saw him?" "But on the whole they didn't know what was happening... so they focused on their own life and on the misery of life in Shanghai." "Lo and behold, after the war they found out they're living in paradise... compared to what happened to their brethren in Europe." "That's what it was." "It's all a relative thing." "You don't know you're living in paradise until you're kicked out." "After American liberation... the living conditions in Shanghai improved greatly." "In the following years... all the refugees left Shanghai and China... and spread around the world." "The Israeli government had chartered three small Greek ships." "These three ships sailed up the Yangtze River, the Whangpoo... with Israeli flags... which is still a very moving moment to me... because obviously if there were an Israel... there wouldn't have been a Holocaust." "It's as simple as that." "Of course, anybody who wanted to was welcome to go aboard the ship." "And no one- These are still moving moments for me." "No one was ever asked for a visa or for a ship's passage... and if that had been true we wouldn't have been in Shanghai... and there wouldn't have been six million Jews killed during the Second World War." "Many of the Jews in Shanghai did go to Israel... and others- most came to the United States, some to Australia." "We came to the United States on a US troop transport- the SS Marine Lynx... which was a beautiful ship for transporting the US Army." "Beautiful ship that took us from Shanghai... through Yokohama and Hawaii to San Francisco." "Couple thousand Jewish refugees on the ship." "Ship got into San Francisco 3:00 in the morning." "I thought the ocean would overflow with all the tears of the refugees... when they see San Francisco at 3:00 in the morning." "But on the transcontinental train from San Francisco to New York..." "I happened to be on the train with two black soldiers." "And usually as soon as the train would stop... we'd get off just to stretch our legs, get a different environment." "We got off at Albuquerque, the black soldiers didn't get off." "I didn't understand why." "Then I walked into the station... and there's a sign, "White Men" and "Colored Men. "" "I remember vividly I felt as if I had been slapped." "I also felt that I couldn't face the black soldiers." "It's not that I was that racially conscious at the time." "Of course I knew about discrimination." "It wasn't anything new to me." "But I'd never encountered it firsthand since we left Germany." "And the one thing I learned... having lived among Japanese and Chinese people... is that I can't find it in myself to hate a nation... or a people."