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The Council on the Jewish Experience in Shanghai (CJES) was formed in 1994 as an international not-for-profit, nongovernmental association. Its goals are to safeguard and develop the historical evidence of the Jewish refuge in Shanghai, to promote scholarly research and public information about the refuge, and to foster contact among the participants in that experience. Soon after World War II ended and the so-called Shanghai ghetto was dissolved, the 17.000 surviving Jewish refugees began to leave Shanghai for other countries; by 1950 almost all had left the city. However, no agency maintained a central registry of them after their departure. When CJES was formed in 1994, the first major task was to begin compiling a list of the thousands of former Shanghai refugees scattered around the world. Large contingents are in the USA and Canada, Israel and Australia, and smaller numbers in Latin America and in several European countries. Beginning with a few hundred, the list now has over a thousand names and current addresses, and more names come in all the time. The preservation of documentary and other materials from the Shanghai exile is a major objective of the Council. Where such material is still in private hands, CJES reaches out to the individual holders to encourage them to place the items in institutions that are properly equipped and suitably staffed. CJES offers free advice to assist in such placement. As CJES does not want to develop a documentary collection of its own, it has developed contacts with archives and museums all over the world that will accept and store these materials and make them available for scholarly purposes. Where documentary materials are held in governmental archives, CJES works to assure access to them for researchers. Sometimes considerable effort is needed to open up restricted records. For example, in 1996-97 CJES filed an action under the Freedom of Information Act to compel the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to release many files on Shanghai and to transfer them to the National Archives, where scholars would be able to use them. In the six years since its founding, CJES has become an increasingly well-known resource and is consulted by university faculty members and graduate students, museum curators, conference organizers, authors and film makers. It has aided in the creation of Shanghai-related exhibitions in North America, Europe and Australia, and in the organization of several conferences and seminars. On request it offers advice to graduate students looking for research topics or other specialized information. CJES publishes an occasional newsletter that draws attention to recently published books and films on Shanghai, and to work that is still in progress. It also announces exhibitions, reunions, seminars and conferences, and in general publicizes new developments related to the Shanghai refuge. It also contains search notices in which private individuals or scholars may look for persons or for information for research projects. Several projects to develop data sources about the Shanghai exile have been undertaken. A worldwide search for holdings of the only daily newspaper published during the ghetto period, the Shanghai Jewish Chronicle, has found many scattered issues but no comprehensive collection. They are to be microfilmed or made available to researchers in another form. A search also continues for records of the extensive interviews held with all refugees departing Shanghai from 1946 to 1949. Other existing data sources, such as the lists of refugees’ names and places of origin published in the Emigranten-Adressbuch of November 1939, have been — or will be — computerized to make scholarly use easier. Discussions between CJES and agencies of China’s national government and Shanghai’s municipal government have explored such issues as the preservation of buildings connected with the Shanghai refuge, the possible restoration of Jewish cemeteries, and the development of markers and guide materials for various sites of the refuge. Policy for CJES is made by its board of directors, consisting of former refugees. The CJES Advisory Committee of Scholars, a distinguished group of a dozen international experts in history, Judaica, literature, Chinese studies, and information science, provides scientific and technical guidance to the Council. All Jewish former refugee residents of Shanghai are automatically members of CJES; there is no membership fee. The work of CJES depends entirely on voluntary financial contributions. For further information please contact Ralph B. Hirsch, Executive Director, Council on the Jewish Experience in Shanghai (CJES), 3500 Race Street, Philadelphia PA 19104, USA; fax 1.215.386.1270, e-mail . Ralph B. Hirsch, 1930 in Berlin geboren, lebte mit seinen Eltern von 1940 bis 1947 in Shanghai, von wo aus er in die USA einwanderte. Als Stadtplaner arbeitete er fiir Regierungsstellen und als Professor. Heute lebt er in Philadelphia und in Deutschland. Refuge in Shanghai April 1997 SPECIAL "RICKSHAW REUNION" EDITION Dear Shanghailanders, On behaif of the Board of Directors of CJES let me reunions it is primarily an occasion to get together with old friends, relive old times, retell old tales, and find out what has happened to each other in the past few years. But this reunion is more. The Rickshaw Reunion committee -- behind that name hides its driving spirit, Walter Silberstein, and those family members and friends whom he has roped into helping with the countless tasks that ge into making such an event -- has invited CJES te prepare the program on Saturday morning which is shown at the reunion, including various documentary media (video and audio}, fiction, and history of the refugee theatre. In this 50th year since our wartime community began to disperse we see an astonishing worldwide rise of interest in the Shanghai experience. But make 0 mistake: each specialist, whether historian, novelist, theatre specialist or documentary film maker, through the experience -- have first preserved, and then made available, to serve as their raw material. Both steps are equally essential. We hope that this reunion will help many of you who have taken the first step to take the second also. Ralph B. Hirsch, for the CJES Board. "How do we preserve historic evidence of our Shanghai years", panel will ask From three different perspectives, this complex issue will be addressed at the reunion on Saturday maming by @ noted panel of experts invited by CJES. Steven Hochstadt, a historian at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, will speak on “Capturing memory by oral history interviews”. The director of research at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, Frank Mecklenburg, will discuss "The importance of documents, personal and official”. The question "What can a museum show about Shanghai?” will be considered by Jacek M. Nowakowski, director of collections and acquisitions at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Ralph B. Hirsch of the Council on the Jewish Experience in Shanghai will serve as moderator and speak briefly about the recent work of CJES. CIES obtains release of secret files on Nazi activity in wartime Shanghai Responding to a request filed by CJES under the Freedom-of-information Act (FOIA), the US Central intelligence Agency has released a large number of previously withheld records that may shed important light on the German government's activities in Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s. Researchers going through records at the National Archives in Washington had noticed that much material in the Shanghai-related files of the wartime Office of Special Services, the forerunner agency of the CiA, had been withdrawn decades ago and was stil} in the custody of the Ralph Hirsch, ‘executive director of CJES, had filed the FOIA request in May 1996. Seven months and countless letters end ronan calls later, he was notified by the CIA that the material would be released and made available to researchers. Astrid Freyeisen, a historian at the University of Wurzburg who during her months of research at the National Archives had compiled a long list of material that was withheld by the CiA, called the result "a fabulous achievement” by CJES. “Assuring public access to research material that can teil us more about the main reasons we created CJES", said Hirsch. Radio series explores personal fates Four outstanding short radio documentaries on the lives of individuals in wartime Shanghai were broadcast in Germany last September by Südwestfunk, the radio network based in Baden-Baden. These documentaries, written by Ursula Krechel, a German author and poet, are among the few attempts in the German media until now to deal with the Shanghai experience. The series was aired under the title Fluchtpunkte: Deutsche Lebensiäufe in Shanghai. It will be played at the reunion on Saturday afternoon. Each piece is 20 to 25 minutes long and is based solely on original documents and, in one case, on an oral-history tape made in the 1960s. Three of the subjects are Jewish refugees; the fourth is a German diplomat who was attached to the consulate in wartime Shanghai. The titles are: Richard Stein Schauspieler, Zeitungsverköufer, Eierhöndler; Ludwig Lazarus - Buchhändler; Erwin Wickert - Rundfunkattaché; Lothar Brieger - Kunsthistoriker. 73
