Portrait of Horst Eisfeld, a Jewish refugee from World War II. On the left is a portrait of his childhood in Berlin; on the right is a portrait of Horst in Shanghai in 1945. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)
Shanghai, September 5 (Xinhua) -- Despite the covid-19 pandemic sweeping the world, 96-year-old Horst Eisfeld, who is in home isolation in Australia in the southern hemisphere, is still worried about the vast metropolis of Shanghai, China.
Recently, the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Memorial Hall received an email from the elderly, telling his thoughts about Shanghai since the epidemic. In addition to past donations, the old man also provided some childhood photos to remember how Shanghai, like an ark, saved him and his family during World War II.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis went on a killing spree in Europe. When some countries closed their doors, Shanghai, China, which had been devastated by war, opened its arms to tens of thousands of desperate Jewish refugees. In 1943, the Japanese invading Japanese army set up a "limited residential area for stateless refugees" of less than 3 square kilometers in Hongkou, Shanghai, also known as the "quarantine area", and about 20,000 Jewish refugees were restricted from their freedom.
Horst Eisfeld was the first-hand witness to this history of World War II. In the autumn of 1938, in a synagogue in Berlin, Horst's parents held a rite of passage for him to turn 13, and the family fled in a hurry to board a cruise ship from an Italian port to Shanghai.
At that time, the teenager Horst had a camera with him, planning to take a lot of photos, and when he returned, he shared the experience with his relatives and friends. But unexpectedly, this trip to China lasted for 9 years, and it became a permanent trick with the relatives who stayed in Berlin.
According to historical records, some Jewish refugees obtained "life visas" to take refuge in Shanghai, while others simply did not have visas and were also accepted by Shanghai. In the heat of the sea, the people of Shanghai and the Jewish refugees formed a deep friendship. They supported each other and became neighbors who could share food, and even Jewish guys married their beloved Shanghai girls.
In 1945, on the eve of the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War, Horst invited his girlfriend to take photos on the streets of Shanghai. (Photo by Horst Courtesy of the interviewee)
Horst loves to take pictures, and to this day his home still retains a large number of photos of Shanghai during World War II, including scenes on the streets, the expressions of Chinese and foreign characters, and the entire city that later "came out" from the trauma of the war.
The people of Shanghai, who lived under the iron hooves of the invaders, kindly accepted a group of Jewish refugees who escaped from the clutches of the devil.
Unlike Horst's way of "arriving", Sonia Millberg was born in Shanghai. In 1938, Sonia's father was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. Her mother tried everything to rescue her husband and came to Shanghai together in April 1939. After escaping death, the young wife discovered that she had a new life in her belly. In October of that year, Sonia was born.
Chen Jian, director of the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Memorial Museum, said: "There are more than 400 children of Jewish refugees born in the quarantine area, these children regard Shanghai as their second home, and we affectionately call them 'Shanghai babies'. ”
In 2021, the wall of Jewish refugee lists in Shanghai was updated. (Photo courtesy of the interviewee)
In the quarantine area, famine and disease were rampant, and fighter planes were often bombed, and there were also passes to enter and exit. One day, 7-year-old Jewish girl, Chaya Small, fell seriously ill, and her father took her to beg the Japanese "governor" in the quarantine area to issue a pass. Unexpectedly, the Japanese named Yaya suddenly asked Chaya's father to lean his head across his desk and expose his neck. Father had to do so, but he did not expect that the house drew his saber.
Chaya once recalled: "A cold light flashed, the knife cut down, I screamed in horror, thinking that my father was dead, and there was a heartbroken laugh in the ear, and it turned out that my father was not injured, but his beard was cut off." Until later in her life, Chaya still remembers the horrific scene, she was afraid of all kinds of knives, and her childhood memories were threats, insults, and traumas that were difficult to heal.
In this quarantine area of Hongkou, Shanghai, even if they did not know each other, Chinese would generously reach out to Jewish refugees. One day in the middle of summer, Schlesinger, a Jewish teenager walking barefoot on the scalding ground, was almost dazed. An old man in Shanghai saw it, beckoned him over, and handed him a bowl of hot tea.
In September 1945, the world anti-fascist war ushered in victory. Shanghai, accompanied Horst into youth. He had a girl he liked, and in order to welcome the victory of the war, the couple went to the bazaar to take photos. In the following years, Horst, Sonia, Chaya and others left China with their families. But the memory of the "Shanghai Ark" is indelible.
After China's reform and opening up, especially in the 21st century, many Jewish refugees and their descendants returned to Shanghai to "find their roots", including Horst, Sonia, Chaya and others.
Sonia said that if her parents had not bravely fled to Shanghai, she would not have come into this world. In her eighties, she has become a professional in the study of this history, and she has worked hard to compile a list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai during World War II, which now exceeds 18,000 names. The list is engraved on the list wall of the Jewish Refugees Museum in Shanghai, where the names are still being added.
Horst used three cameras in China that year, and in 2015 he donated a number of precious photographs and collections of personal photographs to the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Memorial, and he himself continued to excavate and sort out the Story of Shanghai.
Horst recalls that it was not until after the victory in World War II that there was more complete information about his relatives and friends in Berlin. His maternal grandfather died in a Nazi concentration camp, and his two aunts were imprisoned in the camp, physically and mentally devastated.
September 3 this year marks the 76th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War. Horst, who repeatedly emailed the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Memorial, wrote: "To let more people know about this history, how hard peace and happiness are." ”