Subject Guide: Jewish Aid and Rescue

Many Jews fleeing the Nazis sought refuge in Shanghai, which did not require a visa during the early years of the Nazi regime. Although Shanghai allowed many families to enter into China easily, they were restricted to only a few parts of the city which soon became the poorest and most crowded. 

Archival Highlights

Ernest Herzog collection (AR 3935) [Digitized]

The collection contains documents pertaining to Ernst Herzog's emigration from Vienna to Shanghai in 1939 and his life there. Included are residency and work documents; list of restrictions for residency and business ownership for stateless refugees in Shanghai; information about a club for former Shanghai residents in Israel; clippings about Jewish immigration to Shanghai and Jewish life there; articles written by Ernst Herzog about his life in Shanghai; and a collection of playbills and concert programs for events produced by the Jewish exile community in Shanghai.

Jews in Shanghai collection (AR 2509) [Digitized]

The Jews in Shanghai Collection contains an assortment of original and photocopied documentation of Jews in Shanghai during the 1930s and 1940s. In addition it includes an abundance of personal narratives, newspaper clippings and scholarly articles on this subject as well as on the origins of the Jewish Community in Shanghai.

Sebastian Steiner Papers (RG 1030)

Steiner was a resident of the Shanghai ghetto from 1938-1947. This collection contains materials that document Sebastian Steiner’s time in Shanghai during WWII. Materials include professional correspondence related to the jobs Steiner held in Shanghai, and correspondence with officials regarding his residency as well as his eventual departure.

Shanghai Collection (RG 243) [Digitized]

The collection relates to life in the ghetto and includes materials on: founding of the ghetto; relief groups such as JDC, ORT, HIAS, and SACRA (Shanghai Ashkenazic Collaborating Relief Association); political organizations such as Zionist groups, the Bund; the rabbinate; the sick and benevolent society; kitchen fund; commercial establishments; religious schools , secular schools; professional associations; art, theater and music activities; Jewish press; emigration from Shanghai after World War II. There are also manuscript histories of the Shanghai Ghetto.

Shanghai Jewish Youth Community Center (AR 25007) [Digitized]

The Shanghai Jewish Youth Community Center was founded in 1946. The first issue of its magazine was published in February 1947, and then monthly till January 1948 (editor-in-chief H.B. Grawi, later Henry E. Topfer). The magazine was discontinued in 1948, because most members of the Shanghai Jewish Youth Community had emigrated from Shanghai to other countries. It contains activities of the Shanghai Jewish Youth Community Center, interviews, announcements, society gossips, arrivals and departures to the Shanghai Jewish community, poems, syllable puzzles, letters to the editor, articles on education, sport events, concerts, one page stories about different topics, such as life in the Shanghai community, Jewish youth organizations, antisemitism, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Heinrich Heine, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Chinese language, life in Palestine and the United States, etc. The last issue was published in January 1948. 

Library Highlights

An Uncommon Journey: From Vienna to Shanghai to America: A Brother and Sister Escape to Freedom during World War II / Deborah Strobin & Ilie Wacs with SJ Hodges. 2011. Print. 

Exodus to Shanghai: Stories of Escape from the Third Reich / Steve Hochstadt. 2012. Print.

Japanese, Nazis, and Jews; the Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1938-1945 / David Kranzler. Foreword by Abraham G. Duker. New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1976. Print. 

Shanghai Refuge: A Memoir of the World War II Jewish Ghetto / Ernest G. Heppner. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Print. 

Strange Haven: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Shanghai / Sigmund Tobias; Introduction by Michael Berenbaum. Urbana; Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. Print. 

Voices from Shanghai: Jewish Exiles in Wartime China / Edited, Translated, & with an Introduction by Irene Eber. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Print.

Around 1,200 to 1,300 Jewish refugees from 1937 to 1941 were able to find refuge in the Philippines.

Archival Highlights

AHC interview with Brigitte Wachs (AHC 3310) [Digitized]

Brigitte Wachs née Welisch was born in 1932 in Graz, Austria. In 1938 she, her parents, and the family of her uncle, Rudolf Welisch, escaped via Italy to Manila in the Philippines. She went to school there and experienced the Japanese occupation of the Philippines until the liberation by the US army. In 1948 the family immigrated to the United States.

Welisch Family Collection (AR 11717) [Digitized]

The collection contains documentation of the Welisch family of Graz, particularly Rudolf Welisch and Doris née Fleischmann and her parents Martin Fleischmann and Josefine née Borges. Included in the collection are vital records, identity cards, educational records, and photographs. In 1938, they left Austria for Manila

Library Highlights

Escape to Manila: from Nazi tyranny to Japanese terror / Frank Ephraim; foreword by Stanley Karnow. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003.

Jewish identities in East and Southeast Asia: Singapore, Manila, Taipei, Harbin, Shanghai, Rangoon, and Surabaya / Jonathan Goldstein. of New Perspectives on Modern Jewish History v. 6, 2015. 

Mizrekh: Jewish studies in the Far East = Iudaika na Dal'nem Vostoke = Yidishe limudim af dem vaytn mizrekh / [edited by] Ber Boris Kotlerman. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009. 

Rescue in the Philippines refuge from the Holocaust / a film by 3 Roads Communications, Center for Holocaust Humanity Education, and Frieder Films., 2013.