H EADLINES
Refugee Stories
from Shanghai
Ghetto Live On
L OCA L
SASHA ROGELBERG | JE STAFF
TO MANY AMERICAN
Jews, the extent of their
connection with China takes
the form of slurping lo mein
on Christmas Day, an annual
tradition paying homage to the
proximity of the Jewish and
Chinese neighborhoods on the
Lower East Side of New York in
the late 1800s and into the 20th
century. To others, the connection
extends beyond the United
States border and across the
Pacifi c Ocean to the munici-
pality of Shanghai, a temporary
home and haven for Jewish
Holocaust refugees.

Inge Booker, a Warminster
resident, spent almost nine
years of her life in a ghetto in
Shanghai from 1939 to 1948,
where her family lived in a
two-room apartment with no
gas or electricity, cooking over
a charcoal stove for meals and
sleeping on mattresses infested
with bedbugs.

“It was more or less kaput,”
Booker said.

Now 99, Booker still remem-
bers the resilient and vibrant
Jewish community in the
Hongkew Shanghai ghetto that
survived despite the chaos and
Japanese surveillance of the
area during the Sino-Japanese
war from 1937 to 1945.

Her family ate at a small
Viennese restaurant on Friday
nights, where the community
held Shabbat services. She was
married at 19 under a small
chuppah set up in her parents’
home. A rabbi and cantor
were both in attendance, but
the family could only aff ord a
maximum of a cup of coff ee
and two pastries for reception
guests. Booker’s story, though a
shock to those unfamiliar with
the Jewish Holocaust refugees
who made their home in China,
is similar to those of 23,000
Jewish refugees who lived in
the Shanghai ghetto between
1941 and 1945, according to
the Shanghai Jewish Center.

Aft er the Nuremberg Laws
and Kristallnacht cemented
Europe as an unsafe place for
Jews, China became a place
of refuge. Aft er the British
colonization of Shanghai in
the 1800s, the municipality
February 27, 2022
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See Refugee, Page 21
Paul Hoff mann on a rickshaw in the Hongkew ghetto in Shanghai
Courtesy of Jean Hoff mann Lewanda
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM JEWISH EXPONENT
FEBRUARY 17, 2022
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