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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 per¬
formed an administrative role. The Polish refugees in particular
had close contacts with the Russians.
Differences between the communities are reflected in diffe¬
rent ways in the English-language literature on the Jewish ex¬
perience of Shanghai. First, it is evident that most of the
memoirs so far published are by people from the German-spe¬
aking 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 ex¬
perience.* 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 produ¬
ced 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 produc¬
tion to be accorded too much significance. These differences,
however, are echoed among the former Shanghailander I in¬
terviewed. 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has produced a long although unpublished manuscript.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 differen¬
ces among the Shanghailander. They all passed their adole¬
sence 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 ex¬
periences 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 esta¬
blished 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 won¬
dering how he would get enough to eat that day. Those with fa¬
mily 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 ex¬
perience 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 heavi¬
ly on adult women, issues rarely discussed in the Shanghai litera¬
ture.° 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 ex¬
ploitation, was commonplace. Henni Bauer (née Herzer), travel¬
ling 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 exhi¬
bition 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