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ALCOCK-THEATERSAAL Donnerstag, 9. Dezember, 8.30 Uhr RGEN LP's YESSEH™ Eine abwechslungsreiche REVUE In 12 Bildern Humor Musik - Chansons Sketche LILY FLOHR Die welseitige Kuenstlerin M. ELBAUM Der bekannte Humorist M. RISKIN Der erste Geiger d. Sh ghaier Phil. Orch. Am Klavier: Max Retzler Poster einer Theateraufführung in „Little Vienna“ Foto: YIVO New York, Sammlung Paul Rosdy in fact entered into an established Jewish context: Victor Sassoon served as patron; the Russians organized relief efforts, and performed an administrative role. The Polish refugees in particular had close contacts with the Russians. Differences between the communities are reflected in different ways in the English-language literature on the Jewish experience of Shanghai. First, it is evident that most of the memoirs so far published are by people from the German-speaking community. The Polish refugees, who were anyway many fewer in number, have yet to produce a memoir, although Israel Kipen’s autobiography devotes a chapter to his Shanghai experience.* The Russian Jewish community was longer and more firmly established in Shanghai than the refugee community and it is a matter for surprise that Rena Krasno’s memoir is the only product to date from this quarter.* The Sephardim have produced virtually nothing, although something has written on their famous representatives, the Sassoons.° A second feature of the literature is that the memoirs are mostly by men. The total body of work is perhaps too small as yet for either community or gender differences in its production to be accorded too much significance. These differences, however, are echoed among the former Shanghailander I interviewed. The impulse to record is strong among the men: Felix Carrady, from the Sephardic community and Paul Berg (Wagenberg), born in Vienna, have both published short pieces in local magazines. Fred Glover (Friedrich Glogauer), also from Vienna, plans to write; and Horst Eisfelder, from Berlin, has produced a long although unpublished manuscript. As a group, these men also draw attention to generational differences among the Shanghailander. They all passed their adolesence in Shanghai. Their urge to write is no doubt related to the formative experiences which have produced so many ,,coming of age“ novels and films in the western world. 70 National origins, gender and age intersect to provide different views of Shanghai in the 1930s and ’40s. People had different experiences because one was Russian and the other German, one was old and the other was young, one was female and the other was male. Ella Goldberg (née Masloff), born in Shanghai in 1936, of Russian parents, remembers life in the French Concession and a comfortable, bourgeois Shanghai: the French Club, the Russian Club, Jessfield Park, a ,,very sort of colonial life style“. Paul Berg, who arrived in Shanghai from Vienna via Prague at the age of 12, recalls a Shanghai of beggar children covered with sores and flies; pavements crowded with hawkers, barbers, acupuncturists; the night-soil carts dripping refuse along the roadway. These were differences between the exeriences of the established well-to-do immigrant families and the refugees, but among the refugees themselves there were marked differences between those who had resources and those who lacked them. Lore Adler (née Kollman) arrived in Shanghai with her parents in January 1939, joining her maternal grandparents. She lived in an apartment with polished floors and remembers parties with her friends, catered for by her grandmother, who was a wonderful cook. Heinz Ziffer, who was released from Buchenwald on the strength of a ticket to Bangkok, lived in ,an itchy, titchy room“ and often woke up in the morning wondering how he would get enough to eat that day. Those with family in Shanghai by and large fared better than those without. Men and women remember Shanghai differently. George Heller, interviewed for the German documentary Exil Shanghai, expressed views I found common among the younger of the men I interviewed. George arrived in Shanghai at around the age of sixteen and he remembers Shanghai warmly, as a positive experience for him. Bobby Katz, from Vienna, who arrived at much the same age, expressed the same sentiments; so did Horst Eisfelder and Fred Glover, who were somewhat younger. Problems of birth control, birth and childcare weighed heavily on adult women, issues rarely discussed in the Shanghai literature.° For men, Shanghai was a place where sex was freely available. For women, this aspect of Shanghai life was, needless to say, burdensome. Sexual harrassment, not to mention sexual exploitation, was commonplace. Henni Bauer (née Herzer), travelling on a trolley-bus one day, felt a hand under her skirt and found herself being accosted by a Japanese soldier. She slapped him, and then fled: „Within seconds I was surrounded by hundreds of Chinese. The Japanese couldn’t find me, and I got away“. An unusally clear illustration of differences between male and female outlooks emerged from interviews with Heinz and Ilse (née Adler) Ziffer. They married at the end of 1944, eight months before the end of the war. Ilse, thinking back to that time, says: We married in December ’44, very late during the war. Out of desperation! I always thought we wouldn't survive the war. The war was getting closer and there were air raids in Shanghai and it was getting pretty dicey. But Heinz, thinking back to their wedding, says: „I would say we married at a time when we thought things would get better“. Both were right; air raids were beginning, and a strike in Hongkew in 1945 took the lives of Jewish refugees and Chinese residents alike. But the Japanese army was on the retreat, and Heinz and Ilse were able to depart Shanghai for Australia two years after their marriage. Nearly half a century later, in 1995, the first Australian exhibition of the Jewish experience of Shanghai was launched by ,.B’nei Brith“ at the Raoul Wallenberg Centre in the Melbourne suburb of Caulfield. It was attended by a large number of former
