At the age of 19, Michael Blumenthal was carrying the dead and wounded from a field in Hongkou, Shanghai.

It was July 1945 when the American Air Force dropped bombs in the area, targeting a Japanese military base in the occupied Shanghai.

Unfortunately the bombs hit civilians, including local Chinese and Jewish refugees who lived in Hongkou, the designated area for Jews known then as "refugees without nationality."

"We carried them to a big courtyard. Most of the wounded or dead were Chinese. If we lost 20 to 30 of us, the Chinese must have lost hundreds," recalled Blumenthal, 79. He is a former US Secretary of Treasury under President Jimmy Carter.

Blumenthal had followed his parents to Shanghai in 1939 after fleeing Berlin, Germany. "We came to Shanghai only for one reason, to save our lives," he told local media last week in Shanghai during a series of events commemorating the Jewish refugees' survival of World War II in the city.

"Mostly we arrived traumatized and bewildered, the victims of prejudice and a perverted race hatred, and of man's cruelty to his fellow man. And this too we had in common: We were the survivors, the lucky ones. Our families, friends and those who were left behind mostly were killed. Had Shanghai not opened its doors, we would surely have shared their fate," he said at the opening of the seminar.

Crucial haven

Jewish refugees started to immigrate to Shanghai, an open harbor, in 1933 when Hitler came into power, according to Pan Guang of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. However, it was during 1938 that large numbers of them poured in, as most countries closed their gates to them.

Fengshan Ho (1901-97), then Chinese consul general in Vienna, provided many of the fleeing Jews permits to go to Shanghai.

"When my father saw them suffer so much, it was natural for him to sympathize and help them," said Manli Ho, Consul General Ho's daughter, who joined the commemoration in Shanghai last week.

The city received nearly 20,000 Jewish refugees during the war from 1939 to 1945.

Sixty years have passed since the war ended in 1945, but when the former refugees came back for the commemoration, old memories were vivid. They know that friendships last longer than lives.

"Life was difficult at that time, both for the Chinese and the refugees," Blumenthal recalled. "I don't think Shanghainese today can understand how different the city was at that time. There were not so many tall buildings, not enough food, no hospital."

"Many of them arrived with no more than 10 deutsche marks on them, the rest of their property confiscated by the Hitler government," said Pan in his introductory slide show of the history of that time. The seminar on the Jewish refugees in Shanghai was held at the Hotel Equatorial last Friday.

"Their first stops were temporary dormitories with bunk beds, and later they scattered to different parts of Shanghai," Pan said.

A Jewish school Mir Yeshiva moved to Shanghai from Poland in 1938 and soon was taking Jewish students for free. It was known as the Kadoorie School and was next to the Ohel Rachel Synagogue, where an exhibition featuring the Jewish refugees experiences in Shanghai is being held through December 10.

Blumenthal went to the school and learned English there.

Many refugees didn't expect to stay long, believing the war would be over soon. They ended up living in Shanghai for nine or 10 years. They found jobs and started businesses, adapting themselves to the Chinese lifestyle.

"I remember my mother cooking on a little stove in the yard, and we went to the street corner and paid 10 cents for hot water from a shallow kettle," recalled Rene Willdorff, who spent 10 years in Shanghai.

Friendly neighbors

Many Chinese remembered their former Jewish neighbors as "honest, hardworking and smart, with strong business talent."

Unlike people in most Western countries, the Chinese didn't have any hostility toward the Jews. On the contrary, Jews and Chinese shared common values, like emphasis on family, tradition and education.

A commentator at the seminar believed that not only Shanghai's status as an open harbor but also these shared values and the toleration inherent in Chinese traditional culture made the city a rare haven for the refugees of the war.

Hu Dexuan, now in his 80s, has maintained his friendship with a Jewish family through the decades, even after the Jewish family migrated to Australia following the war.

In a time when Chinese still believed that the more children a family had, the happier they would be, it was his Jewish friend, known as Dr Stengraber, who told him that fewer children would benefit his family. It was important to give the children including daughters a good education, Hu recalled Dr Stengraber as saying.

"Years after the Stengrabers left China in the 1950s, I still wore clothes they gave us," recalled Hu Youhua, the youngest Hu daughter.

Some refugees cultivated a life-long love for Chinese culture. Karl Bettleheim, a renowned biologist, was from an antiques dealer's family. As soon as the Bettleheims settled down in Shanghai, his parents resumed their interest in cultural relics and started to collect Chinese antiques.

"We have two tapestries and some bronze and porcelain, one of which has proven to be from the Qianlong period (1736-95)," said Bettleheim. "Wherever I move, I always have them with me."

As a child, Bettleheim developed his interest in collecting matchbox covers. His precious collection of about 1,000 matchboxes, many from Old Shanghai, still accompanies him along with the highly valuable Chinese antiques.

At a reunion of old neighbors held at the Ohel Moshe Synagogue in Tilanqiao last week, Sonja Muhlberger took out some colorful rubber bands and sang a ballad, sharing her childhood memories through lyrics made up of Chinese and pidgin Japanese. The rubber bands reminded her of one of the few games shared by refugees and Chinese children, in which they strung together the elastic bands and used them as jump ropes.

In 1942, the Japanese, under pressure from the Nazis, tightened controls on Jewish refugees. They made Hongkou area a designated "ghetto."

Today rows of European-style buildings remain in the area. Several newspapers were published here, in English, German and even Yiddish. It was the refugees who brought Yiddish literature to Shanghai for the first time, without translation from English or Russian.

"We are still the kids. Having been raised in horrible circumstances, we have family feelings for each other. I want to try to keep that family together," Rene Willdorff said at the seminar. He is the chairman of the "Rickshaw Union," a network of refugees in Shanghai.

"Only a few of us with valid firsthand memories are still alive. Soon we too will be gone," Blumenthal said at the seminar. He came back to visit Shanghai several times after the 1970s, bringing his children along. "I used to walk for hours, showing them the past."

"Remembering history helps to promote international harmony," Pan said. "Now there are still many religious and national conflicts in the world."

Remembering the history also helps today's development. Many former refugees have an emotional attachment to Shanghai and are ready to contribute their efforts to the city. A new Jewish community has been established in Shanghai.

Dvir Bar-Gal, a photo journalist from Israel, is trying to discover the tombstones of the immigrants to Shanghai in the early 1900s. He has torn stones off old walls and dug them out of Suzhou Creek. He hopes one day to build a memorial place in Shanghai for these stones.

The local Shanghai government is planning to protect the former Jewish communities, which cover about 30 hectares, in the coming five to eight years.

"Both Jewish and Chinese have deep respect for our ancestors, and remembering history is a way to live our own," he said.

(China Daily November 16, 2005)