Escape to Manila: From Nazi Tyranny to Japanese Terror

2. Unexpected Arrivals

✦ 2 Unexpected Arrivals events that would have a major impact on the Jewish community in the Philippines were unfolding in China,particularly in Shanghai,eleven hundred miles north of Manila. The long-standing Sino-Japanese conflict had flared up again on July 7,1937,when a company of Japanese troops went on a scheduled night maneuver near a railway bridge ten miles west of Peking. South of the railroad crossing stood the Lu Gou Qiao,better known as the Marco Polo Bridge,in honor of theVenetian traveler who crossed it in the thirteenth century .The Japanese maneuver was looked upon with considerable trepidation by the Chinese and foreign military officers stationed in Peking because the railway bridge was the last remaining passage to Peking—all other avenues were blocked by the Japanese army.The morning after the Japanese night maneuver , a Japanese soldier was reported missing from his unit. Accusations of blame flew between Japanese and Chinese commanders in the area, followed by a Japanese artillery bombardment.Although a truce was arranged,the fighting continued,and the Japanese used the “Marco Polo Incident” to move massive ground forces into northern China. The weak Chinese army evacuated Peking on July 28, 1937, and a week later the Japanese army occupied the city.1 After this retreat, Chiang Kai-shek, president of Nationalist China, decided to create a diversion by moving troops from the capital, Nanking, to confront the Japanese in Shanghai.2 Unexpected Arrivals 21 More than four million inhabitants, including one hundred thousand foreigners, lived in Shanghai.At the time, one could enter the city without a visa.The city had an unsavory reputation,not just in hygienic terms,but even more so as a hub of espionage, sin, and crime, which, however, did not detract from it as a busy seaport and a center of trade and finance. Moreover, Shanghai offered a refuge for Jews fleeing Germany.3 Max Berges, a German Jew, and his wife, Anna, a German Catholic, arrived in Shanghai from Hamburg in 1935 after a long train journey through Poland,the Soviet Union,and Manchuria,and then by steamer from Dairen, China.Berges,a journalist and writer,found employment as a shipping clerk, but he eventually became manager of the Casanova Ballroom, where he was known as “Max of the Casanova.”4 As a result of the heavy fighting in Shanghai between Chinese Nationalist forces and the Japanese troops who had entered the city, the Casanova Ballroom and all other entertainment establishments in Shanghai closed their doors in mid-August 1937, and Berges was out of a job. The same thing happened to Anna, a singer at the Blue Danube nightclub. Shanghai, which lies on the Huangpu River, was soon cut off from supplies as Japanese troops landed at Wusong, where the Huangpu meets the Yangtze, whose delta waters flow into the East China Sea.While at first viewing the situation as just another short-term skirmish that would subside into the status quo, it soon became apparent to Max and Anna that this time the escalating conflict could put them in mortal danger. A number of other German Jews had also found refuge in Shanghai; they held German passports, which many of them renewed at the local German consulate,thus providing a record of their addresses and telephone numbers. At that time, German passports did not carry the large red letter J imprint, which stood for Jude, a designation used after October 1938 by Germany in response to Swiss efforts to bar Jewish refugees from entering that country.5 In any case, by 1937 German Jews had been deprived of their German citizenship ,a fact certainly known by German foreign service officials in Shanghai . But in an ironic twist, the German consulate staff telephoned all Germans ,including the German Jews in Shanghai,announcing a plan to evacuate them aboard the Gneisenau, the passenger liner that had only recently brought the Hoeflein family to Manila. The ship, docked in Yokohama— some fourteen hundred miles away—altered course on its return voyage, entering the Yangtze to pick up the German refugees. The Jewish community in Manila became aware of the plight of the Jewish refugees in Shanghai when they received a telegram requesting financial 22 escape to manila assistance. Philip Frieder, in Manila tending the family tobacco business and also heading the Jewish community, immediately went about collecting money...