Abstract
As European luxury liners steamed up the Huangpu River, their Jewish refugee passengers were on the verge of unimaginably new lives. Arrival in Shanghai was a shock. Loaded onto trucks like so much baggage, they were driven across the Garden Bridge to a barracks outfitted with bunk beds. Two hallmarks of European domestic life, privacy and cleanliness, were suddenly replaced by tropical heat, bedbugs, and shared toilets. The Nazis had stolen their possessions in Europe, but the reality of refugee poverty struck them first in China.
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Notes
Maisie J. Meyer’s work is the most thorough description of the Baghdadi Jewish community: From the Rivers of Babylon to the Whangpoo: A Century of Sephardi Jewish Life in Shanghai (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003).
Rena Krasno’s memoirs of the Shanghai Russian community are excellent That Last Glorious Summer 1939: Shanghai-Japan (Hong Kong: Old China Hand Press, 2001); and Strangers Always: A Jewish Family in Wartime Shanghai (Berkeley, CA: Pacific View Press, 1992).
Marcia Renders Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001) describes both the Russian Jewish and non-Jewish communities.
An excellent synthesis of refugee theater is Michael Philipp, Nicht einmal einen Thespiskarren: Exiltheater in Shanghai 1939–1947 (Hamburg: Hamburger Arbeitsstelle für deutsche Exilliteratur, 1996).
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© 2012 Steve Hochstadt
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Hochstadt, S. (2012). Culture Shock and Community Creation in Shanghai. In: Exodus to Shanghai. Palgrave Studies in Oral History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137006721_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137006721_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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