Approximately 18,000 European Jews fleeing Nazism in the 1930s and 40s found refuge in Shanghai, which did not require entry visas until August 1939. The refugees rebuilt their lives in the Chinese city, and they established schools, synagogues, and mutual aid organizations that long outlasted the war.
In this Museum program, Holocaust survivor Rabbi Arthur Schneier, Senior Rabbi at New York’s Park East Synagogue and leader of one of the first interfaith missions to China in 1981, discusses Shanghai’s remarkable wartime legacy in a conversation with Lucy Yang, reporter for New York’s Channel 7 Eyewitness News.
Watch the program below.