Escape to Shanghai: A Jewish Community in China (review)

216 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring 1995 English began in China. In today's world, the teaching and learning of a second or foreign language is, to a great extent, necessary for the purpose ofcross-cultural communication. In cross-cultural understanding, ifthe culture of the target language is not understood, it is doubtful diat effective communication will take place. It is very likely that the teaching of English in China will be upgraded when die attitude toward Western culture becomes less hostile. Despite a few weaknesses, the book holds up well. It is a multidimensional work that is a rich source ofinformation, providing a useful framework to gaining a deeper insight into the teaching of English in China. It is commendable tiiat Ross goes some way toward making China's EFL practices less ofa mystery to the Chinese themselves. Winston Churchill would have been impressed. Dan Huai Lu University ofAlberta mi James R. Ross. Escape to Shanghai: A Jewish Community in China. New York (and elsewhere): The Free Press, a Division ofMacmillan, Inc., 1994. xvi, 298 pp. Hardcover $22.95. In 1934, shordy after Hitler came to power, small numbers of German Jewish professionals began arriving in China. Following the German takeover ofAustria in March 1938, the trickle turned into a flood by die end of die year and the beginning of 1939. The infamous pogrom against the Jews during the so-called Kristallnacht in November 1938, together with the imprisonment ofhundreds of Jewish men in German concentration camps, and the deportation ofPolish Jewish citizens to Poland one month earlier were warning signals to depart. But the Evian conference ofJuly 1938, called to deal with emigration and resettlement of political refugees and diose persecuted because ofrace and religion, that is, Jews, produced meager results. In 1939 the one place without visa requirements was Shanghai. Jews fleeing Germany and Austria traveled on Italian carriers via Italian ports, although some refugees arrived also on Japanese and German ships. After August K ,„„. , „ . . 1939, the flood subsided when die Japanese announced residence restrictions, and© 1995 by Universityr ofHawai'iPressItaly's entry into the war in June 1940 ended travel to China via the Mediterranean . More Jewish and non-Jewish refugees still continued to arrive, however, until the outbreak ofthe Pacific War in December 1941. These came now on the Trans- Reviews 217 Siberian Railway to Manchouli on the Manchukuo side of the border widi the Soviet Union, continued on to Harbin and Dairen (Dalian), and from there sailed to Shanghai. A contingent ofrabbinical students, rabbis, and several hundred others reached Shanghai via Kobe. As many as two thousand refugees were said to have passed through Kobe to various destinations. Those taking the land route in 1940-1941 were for the most part from Poland and Lithu-ania; small numbers of German refugees also managed to trek through occupied Poland to Moscow, there to book places on the Trans-Siberian. By the end of 1941, approximately seventeen thousand (some give a higher number of twenty thousand) newcomers from various parts ofEurope who had little in common except that they were refugees and/or Jewish had crowded into Hongkou, the International Settlement, and die French Concession, with the bulk in Japanese con-trolled Hongkou. Prior to December 1941, a handful still obtained American visas and left. The majority remained in Shanghai throughout the war years; they dispersed gradually between 1945 and 1950. Escape to Shanghai is the story of this refugee community, largely told through the eyes of three German refugees and one Austrian. Their ages in Shanghai varied : Sam Didner, a physician, was in his tiiirties; Howard Levin and Eva Kantorowsky Angress in their twenties; Gerhard Heimann was in his teens. The autiior has augmented the four oral histories with additional interviews, and he has made good use ofdocumentary materials available in the U.S. National Archives in Washington and elsewhere. But a history of the Jewish communities in modern China, including tiie refugee community, still remains to be written, and the author had only few—and, at that, limited secondary—accounts available to him. He has also not made use of Russian or Yiddish sources and, except for Kyoko Inuzuka's...