Through September 5th: Exhibit Shanghai: Safe Haven During the Holocaust Exhibit
Shanghai: Safe Haven During the Holocaust
Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center - Northern Trust Gallery
The Joseph L. & Emily K. Gidwitz
Memorial Foundation Gallery
In 1946, American photojournalist Arthur Rothstein began a project documenting the lives of Jewish refugees who now called Shanghai’s Hongkew District “home.” This exhibit sheds light on a lesser-known moment in Holocaust history: European Jews who had been shut out of country after country while trying to escape Nazi persecution, only to find a beacon of hope in China.
August 18th - 1-2 pm (PDT) The Jews of China: Enduring Survival in the Middle Kingdom
Virtual Event Presentation by Dr. James Baskind
Co-sponsored by Valley Beit Midrash
Congregation Or Tzion
Scottsdale, Arizona
The story of the Kaifeng Jews is a little-known episode of the Diaspora, but its existence caught the imagination of both European missionaries and prominent Jews, with far-reaching effects. An investigation of this isolated yet enduring enclave will highlight the dynamic tension between fidelity to, and adaptation within, tradition, while under the rule of a dominant and highly codified culture.
April 22 - June 30 - Exhibit - Jewish Refugees in Shanghai
Kensington Library - Brooklyn, New York
In collaboration with Amud Aish Memorial Musuem
and the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum
This multi-branch exhibition includes images and ephemera of European Jews who were displaced during the war, films and lectures about their time in China, and a discussion about their eventual emigration to the United States. When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, he issued a series of anti-Semitic decrees, depriving Jews of their civil rights. With the outbreak of WWII, many Jews chose to flee their hometowns, and a considerable number of them took refuge in Shanghai, China— a city they could travel to without a visa. Around that same time, students from the Mir Yeshiva in Vilna, Lithuania, also made their way to East Asia to escape the Nazi regime, setting up yeshivas in their new home. Many of these students—and their families—emigrated to Brooklyn, NY, following Japan’s surrender in 1945.
June 7 - The Last Kings of Shanghai - Online Talk
Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong
membership@royalasiaticsociety.org.hk
Jonathan Kaufman tells the remarkable story of two Jewish families, both originally from Baghdad, who stood astride Chinese business and politics for more than 175 years, profiting from the Opium Wars; surviving Japanese occupation; saving the lives of 18,000 Jews fleeing Nazi persecution; and losing nearly everything as the Communists swept into power. In a story stretching from Baghdad to Hong Kong to Shanghai to London, Kaufman enters the lives and minds of these ambitious men and women to forge a tale of opium smuggling, family rivalry, political intrigue, and survival.
May 15, 2022 - Shanghai Exodus: The Early Years
Historic Shanghai Cocktail Cinema:
Shanghai Exodus
(2009 Documentary)
What was it like to grow up as part of Old Shanghai’s fabled international community? In this powerful documentary, the story of Shanghai’s history is told through rare historic footage, interspersed with the personal stories and reminisces of the men and women who grew up in 1920s-40s Shanghai, during an era of turbulence and drama—a story with special resonance today.
April 5th - April 30th, 2022 Art Exhibit - Shanghai Jewish Refugees
The Jewish Refugees in Shanghai Exhibition (1933-1941) brings together for the first time photos, personal stories, and artifacts from Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum. Lectures, Opening Celebration and Screening of Documentary "Shanghai Ghetto"
University of Washington Hillel
Confucius Institute of the State of Washington
Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the Univ. of Washington Hillel at the University of Washington
April 30, 2022 - Historic Shanghai Book Club: Witness to History From Vienna to Shanghai
Historic Shanghai Book Club
Witness to History from Vienna to Shanghai:
A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resilience by Paul Hoffman and Jean Hoffman Lewanda .
On the rainy afternoon of November 28,1938, a slight 18-year-old Austrian man took in his first impressions of Shanghai. Paul Hoffmann had left his family and all that was familiar to him in Vienna and was now among a forlorn stream of thousands of Jewish refugees into China to escape Nazism. For the next thirteen years, Shanghai would be his home, and he made the most of the last years of the foreign-dominated world of old Shanghai. Witness to History is the moving memoir of a man caught up in the tides of history, who witnessed and experienced the Nazi revolution in Europe, the Japanese invasion of China and the Communist victory in China in 1949, and emerged from the challenges all the wiser.
Sunday, March 13, 2022 Shalom China
Zoom Talk History of the Jewish Presence in China
1:00 PM LOS ANGELES • 4:00 PM NEW YORK
Sponsored by the Sousa Mendes Foundation
Watch a short video produced by the World Jewish Congress Going East: The Jews of China www.sousamendesfoundation.org
January 16, 2022 2:00 p.m. Shanghai Walking Tour "Inside the 1927 Somekh Building"
January Walks Offered by Historic Shanghai
"Inside the RockBund Series"
Its quiet beauty houses a rich heritage: Sephardic Jewish businessman B.A. Somekh hired Moorhead, Halse & Robinson -- the firm which had designed the Ohel Rachel Synagogue and the Shanghai Club -- to build him a prestigious legacy. Tragically, he died the year it was completed. He left a fortune to his sons and a building in which a century’s worth of history resides.
For more on the series:
Virtual Tour - Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum - January 202
January 12, 2022 Virtual Tour of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum
Sponsored by the Jewish Museum of Milwaukee
Zoom Virtual Tour - Registration
7:00-8:00 p.m. CST
Since its establishment, the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum has been trying to preserve the history of about 20,000 European Jews who fled to Shanghai in order to avoid persecution by the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s. Explore historical artifacts and stories of Jews taking refuge in Shanghai, which focus on their resilience and optimism under difficult circumstances, as well as their friendship with the Chinese people.