[Written in 2011]
Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania
On that awful day, 1 September 1939, Germany attacked Poland and at the same time, the Soviet Union occupied the eastern parts of that country. Those Jews who could escape, went to the soon-to-be part of the Soviet Union, Lithuania. 2,100 Polish Jews found temporary safe haven there, including the Mir Yeshiva (a Jewish educational institution) with all its students and rabbanim (rabbis).
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One of the students, Nathan Gutwirth, a Dutch citizen, came to see Chiune (Senpo) Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania, for a transit visa through Japan en-route to the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao, some 900 miles from the USA. In his passport, the honorary acting Dutch consul in Kaunas (Kovno), Jan Zwartendijk, had entered a note affirming that Curaçao did not require an entry visa. On the strength of this, Sugihara has given him a multi-lingual transit visa to Japan. Thereafter, suddenly others came with the Curaçao stamp in their passport with the same request. A trickle fast became a huge river of humanity trying to escape to the USA via Japan. On seeing the volume of transit visa requests, Sugihara cabled to the Japanese Foreign Office for instructions. Senpo Sugihara was ordered to discontinue issuing those visas, but his conscience dictated that he should ignore his superiors. As a demotion, Sugihara was transferred to the Japanese Embassy in Berlin, but not before about six thousand Jews in Kovno (Kaunas), Vilna and elsewhere in Lithuania, had the transit visa safely in their passports. These Jews, armed with a transit visa through Japan, could request exit permits from the Soviet authorities and leave the country on the Trans-Siberian express via Vladivostok for Japan.
In the late 30s and 40s, Jewish life and learning in Europe was in peril. The famous yeshivas of Europe, like Telz (Telšiai), Łódź, Slobodka (Vilijampolė), Lublin and Radin (Radun) fragmented, leaving only one major yeshiva intact, the Mir.
When the Germans started to shell the Northern Polish town of Mir in October 1939, the 300 rabbanim and students of different nationalities of the yeshiva fled to Vilna, but 6 months later, local anti-Semites drove them to the small town of Kaidan (Kėdainiai). However, not much later, to escape the occupying anti-religious Soviets attention, the Yeshiva split into four and scattered in the Lithuanian countryside to Kruk (Kriukai), Shat (Šėta), Remigole (Ramygala) and Krakinove (Krekenava). From these small places, the Yeshiva selected two representatives, the principal’s secretary and a student, a bochur (young man), to go to Kovno to secure Japanese transit visas for all the 300. The bochur had to stay behind to help the Japanese consul stamping all the passports.
Rabbi Shimon Sholom Kalish, the Amshinover Rebbe, who, in 1939, failed to persuade the large Jewish population of his home town of Otvotsk (Otwock) to follow his example and leave before the German advance, also received the transit visa to Japan.
The Soviet tourist bureau, the Inturist, demanded $300 each, in hard American money, for fare and accommodation on the way to Japan. According to Soviet law, it was forbidden, on pain of long prison sentence or even death, to have foreign exchange in one’s possession, so the money had to come from abroad directly to the authorities. The money had to be raised fast, because exit permits from the USSR had very definite time limits. In frantic activities, cables were sent to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), to HICEM, its European counterpart, to the Joint Distribution Committee, and to family and friends living in America for help. Large sums were deposited on behalf of these trapped Jews. The Va’ad Hatzalah, the American religious organisation for rescuing European Jews from Nazism, made the Mir Yeshiva its top priority and managed to raise $50,000 needed to transport the Yeshiva to Japan. Some people sold everything they had to raise the fare, but were caught by the Soviets exchanging their money for dollars and were executed for their “crime”. Nevertheless, by mid-January 1941, the exodus had started. The Amshinover Rebbe, the Rebbe of Otwock, also received the transit. Between July 1940 and June 1941, about 2,200 Jewish refugees left Lithuania for Moscow, where they boarded the Trans-Siberian train. Most refugees stayed at the Hotel Novo during their brief stopover. The Trans-Siberian train maintained a twice weekly service for the 6,000 miles journey. In Vladivostok, the end of the Trans-Siberian railway line, the Soviets confiscated all valuables before the refugees were allowed to board Japanese steamers.
Kobe, Japan
The Jewish refugees landed at the Japanese port city of Tsuruga, destitute and with no documentation; however the representatives of the Jewish community of Kobe, Japan, Alex Triguboff and two others, who acted as interpreters and helpers with Japanese officialdom, were on hand. With financial help from the Joint Distribution Committee, the Jewish community of Kobe, where the refugees were taken, had arranged housing and food.
Well before the Second World War, Kobe had a Jewish community. Sephardi Jews from Baghdad, Iraq and Aleppo, Syria, and Ashkenazi Jews escaping pogroms from Poland and Russia, had settled in Kobe. The Aleppo-born Rahmo Sassoon set up the first Sephardi synagogue there, naming it Ohel Shelomoh after his father, Shelomoh Sassoon. In 1940, Kobe had approximately three thousand western foreigners living there, including about one hundred Jews. These westerners fitted in to the host community with ease. The Japanese accepted a large influx of Jews into Kobe during World War II. Even though Japan was allied with Nazi Germany, the community of Kobe helped save Holocaust refugees in 1940 /41. Dealing with the refugees needed organisation. A request for money was sent to the Joint in America and the reply was cabled:
“SAVE JEWS MONEY NO OBJECT”.
The telegraphic address was “Kobejewcom” and so the organisation dealing with the Jewish refugees was named Kobe Jewcom.
The 300 rabbis and students of the Mir Yeshiva found suitable accommodation in a Japanese family house and carried on with the business of studying.
A Japanese transit visa was valid for 21 days only. This problem was overcome by approaching a Christian minister of religion, Dr Kotsuji, who spoke fluent Hebrew and was well disposed toward the Jewish people. Dr Kotsuji, although not in the government or even politics, had the ear of the foreign minister, Yosuke Matsuoka. Dr Kotsuji explained to the minister that should these Jews be sent back to Europe, they would be facing certain death. He also pointed out that the Jewish people were far from the “scum of the earth”, but tended to have skills and connections that may be beneficial for the Japanese Empire. Dr Kotsuji’s request put the foreign minister in a difficult position. The Tripartite Pact was signed by Matsuoka in September for military unity between Japan, Italy and Germany. The Nazis were uneasy at the presence of so many Jews finding a safe place in Japan. Furthermore, extending transit visas was unheard of in Japan. To overcome this problem, the foreign minister suggested that the Kobe local authorities should deal with the visas without involving central government and that he, should it be discovered, would deny any knowledge of this.
The first refugees were accommodated by the community in their own homes, but as the numbers grew, Jewcom’s Housing Committee had rented a number of buildings and set up dormitories there. These dormitories were referred to as “the Heime”. The Heime was fitted out in Japanese style with tatami floor and brightly coloured futons. All expenses were paid by the Joint. The Japanese doctors were compassionate toward the refugees and either under charged or treated the sick refugees free of charge. Jewcom imported kosher provisions from America for the religious, even wine and matzo were provided for Pesach.
Gradually it became obvious that fewer refugees were leaving Japan than arriving. By the end of January 1941, there were 270 refugees in Kobe alone. And the Germans were exerting more and more pressure on the Japanese to refuse the Jews a safe haven. To placate them, Japanese embassies stopped issuing transit visas to Jews. The Japanese Navy High Command ordered two leading Jews from Kobe, in early 1941, to appear in three days for a military interrogation. The order was signed by chief secretary of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Jewcom convened for a meeting to decide who should go. As the community had no real secular leaders, it was decided that they should be represented by Rabbanim.
The Amshenover Rebbe, with Rabbi Moses Shatzkes (an acknowledged Talmudic scholar who at an early age had been chosen chief rabbi of Lomz (Łomża)), and Rabbi Shlomo Shapiro, a young linguist who offered to help with the translation and with bridging the cultural gap, together with Hanin representing Jewcom, took an overnight train to Tokyo. On arrival, the Christian cleric, Dr Kotsuji, met them at the station and took them directly to the Naval Officers’ Headquarters. At the gate, Mr Fujisawa, the official translator and his assistant were waiting for them. The Amshenover Rebbe and Rabbi Shatzkes were ushered in to one room and Rabbi Shapiro and Hanin were ushered into another small waiting room, ignoring Rabbi Shapiro’s protestations that he was needed to translate. He was simply told that “Mr Fujisawa, the official translator is very good at his job”. As the two rabbis could not speak English, Mr Fujisawa had to ask Rabbi Shapiro and Hanin to take part in the proceedings, after all. The interrogations began with Fujisawa translating from Japanese to English and Rabbi Shapiro from English to Yiddish and vice versa. After a short exchange of pleasantries, the first question was shot across the table, coming straight to the point:
“What is the inherent evil of your people that our friends the Germans hate you so much?”
Rabbi Satzkes was younger, but the more eminent scholar, so the Rebbe looked to him to come up with an answer. But the rabbi, feeling the gravity of the moment, was lost for words, so the more elderly Amshenover Rebbe replied:
“The Nazis hate the Jews because the Nazis know that we Jews are Asians. I have just come from Europe. I have lived with the great hate that the Nazis have for others. I think that perhaps no one who has not lived in the midst of it can understand it. But to get even an inkling of the scope of their hate, do not read their writings in the censored translations they give you. Read what Nazis write in the original German. There, you will learn that you also are on their list of ‘inferior people’. So are the gypsies, the blacks, the Slavs... and the Japanese.”
And the Rebbe carried on telling their interrogators all the horrors the Jewish people had to endure from the hands of the Germans (and he, like anyone else, did not know the half of it). “You are lying.” was the predictable response of the first admiral, but the Rebbe kept his cool and simply said:
“No, consider for yourself: What is the image of Hitler’s master race? How does he describe it? In films, documentaries, newspapers, who is shown bringing victory home to the German Fatherland? Always the so-called Aryans! They hate ALL OF US because we, I or you don’t fit the image of the Aryan race”.
The stunned silence following the Rebbe’s reply was broken by one of the admirals announcing a tea break and apologising for treating the these people from the long journey, elderly Jewish delegates, with inconsideration. The meeting resumed two hours later in a different, more pleasant room. The discussion changed to a comparison of Judaism and the Shinto religion. The meeting ended with the Amshenover Rebbe expressing his gratitude for the Japanese taking in and providing shelter to the Jewish refugees.
In 7 December 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbour took place and everything changed. The Japanese were no longer looking for US approval of her expansion in East Asia and all those refugees were a nuisance to them. Japan shipped the refugees to Shanghai.
Shanghai, China
Shanghai, at the mouth of the Yangtze River was opened to foreign trade by the 1842 Treaty of Nanking.
Many Russian and East European Jews, escaping pogroms and persecutions, found their way to Shanghai. The first synagogue, Ohel Moishe (Ashkenazi), was built in 1907. The Sephardi community from Baghdad, Bombay and Cairo, including the wealthy families Sassoon, Kadoorie, Haddon, Ezra, Shamoon and Baroukh, came to exploit the business opportunities Shanghai offered. Before 1917, the Soviet October Revolution, the Jewish population of Shanghai was approximately 700: 400 Sephardim, 250 Europeans, and 50 Americans.
On 8 December 1941, at around 4am, following the attack on Pearl Harbour, the Japanese armoured cruiser Izumo, on the Yangtze River in downtown Shanghai, opened fire, forcing the American gunboat USS Wake to surrender and sinking the British gunboat HMS Petrel. The Japanese army now not only controlled their own little sector, but the whole of Shanghai and eventually the French Concession, never mind that the French were now under the Vichy Government which was allied to the Axis Powers: Germany, Italy and Japan.
When their boat berthed in Shanghai in the middle of the Yangtze, the refugees saw a city with huge buildings lining the river bank. But when they landed, they also saw a crowded, dirty, and crime-ridden place. In the city’s International Settlement, hundreds of thousands of destitute Chinese lived among a wealthy foreign community elite of British and American traders and financiers. After the refugees passed immigration and customs, they were picked up by members of the Shanghai’s Jewish refugee organisation, the Eastjewcom. Having crossed the Garden Bridge over the filthy Soochow Creek, they entered the International Settlement and arrived in Hongkew. They passed through the area built by German and Austrian Jews in 1937/38, popularly known as “Little Vienna”, arriving in the real Hongkew, a slum of the first order, mainly inhabited by the Chinese working classes. In 1937, the retreating Chinese burned down the place and it was replaced by make-do slum dwellings. It was here in Pingliang Road where the Shanghai Heime was. In this ordinary family house was the processing centre and the home of nearly sixty German-Jewish refugees. Some of the refugee families were allocated meagre, basic homes in Hongkew. Children without parents, single people and those for whom Eastjewcomcould not find accommodation, stayed in the Heime. The Yeshiva was offered by the Sephardi millionaire (with a Chinese wife and several adopted children of all races and whose father was reprimanded for not helping his own people), the Bet Aharon Synagogue, a Synagogue he set up. Interestingly, the Synagogue had the same number of seats as the Yeshiva had students.
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The Amshenover Rebbe was offered accommodation in the upmarket district of the French Concession by one his followers. The eleven hundred Polish-Jewish refugees found it hard to find a job, some, however, were occupied as waiters, tailors, second-hand merchants and the like. As elsewhere, there was a gulf between the Polish and German Jews. Whilst the Germans were more secular, the Poles and Russians were more frum, more religious. The Poles managed to set up a boys’ and a girls’ school, where religious and secular studies were combined. Yiddish periodicals and newspapers appeared and even a Yiddish theatre had regular performances and there were daily Yiddish news broadcasts on the radio.
At one point, the Japanese authorities in Shanghai started to impose stricter security measures. As the German, Austrian and Polish Jews were stripped of their nationality by the Nazis, they were “stateless” people and in early 1943, the Japanese ordered them to live within a “designated area” in Hongkew. Life in the Shanghai ghetto was difficult, though they did not suffer the same daily terrors as their brethren did in European ghettos. Still, Polish-Jewish writers used a Yiddish expression to describe Shanghai: “shond chay” (a shame of a life). Nevertheless, the Japanese treatment of Jews in Shanghai was comparatively benign. Those who had jobs to go to were allowed out, but had to return in the evening. The Bet Aharon Synagogue was outside the Ghetto, so the students and teachers commuted from the Ghetto to the Synagogue every day to study.
As Japan was now an enemy nation, financial aid from the US to the incarcerated Jews of Shanghai stopped. However, the Va’ad Hatzalah and especially Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz, found ways to raise and transfer money. With the co-operation of the Japanese government, organisations like the Va’ad Hatzalah or the Agudat Israel, transferred some money via Switzerland or Portugal. Although life was hard at that time, the Mir Yeshiva managed to re-print almost the complete Shas that was badly needed.
Shortly before the end of the war, a U.S. air raid on industrial Hongkew killed 40 Jewish refugees.
On 15 August, 1945 news arrived of Japan’s surrender to America.
In 1946, an American naval unit came to Shanghai and stayed for a while. A number of American-Jewish sailors attended the Friday night services at the Ohel Rachel Synagogue. Many of the local members stayed on after the regular services to hear and join in the special service that was conducted by an American chaplain, according to the prayer books issued by the U.S. Army.
As a footnote, the Mir Yeshiva was the only East European Yeshiva to survive intact.
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