Shanghai was notable for a long period as the only place in the world that unconditionally offered refuge for Jews escaping from the Nazis.

[2] The Japanese authorities increasingly stepped up restrictions, surrounded the ghetto with barbed wire, and the local Chinese residents, whose living conditions were often as bad, did not leave.

[5] Starting from 1934, one year after The Nazi Party gained control over Germany, some people chose China as a shelter for Jewish refugees.

However, under the fear that a massive wave of migration may draw attention and attacks from Germany, the Chinese government finally decided to modify the plan, only accepting Jewish refugees without citizenship allowed as migrants to live in China.

However, in the Shanghai International Settlement, there existed demilitarized areas which provided safe havens where tens of thousands of European Jewish refugees could escape from the growing horrors of the holocaust and also a place where a half million Chinese civilians could find safety.

The latter fled the Russian Empire because of antisemitic pogroms pushed by the tsarist regime and counter-revolutionary armies as well as the class struggle manifested by the Bolsheviks.

This was difficult, however, because at the 1938 Évian Conference, 31 countries (including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand — out of a total of 32) refused to accept Jewish immigrants.

Motivated by humanitarianism, Ho started to issue transit visas to Shanghai, under Japanese occupation except for foreign concessions.

[17] Ho died in 1997 and his actions were recognized posthumously when in 2000 the Israeli organization Yad Vashem decided to award him the title "Righteous Among the Nations".

The refugees who managed to purchase tickets for luxurious Italian and Japanese cruise steamships departing from Genoa later described their three-week journey with plenty of food and entertainment—between persecution in Germany and squalid ghetto in Shanghai—as surreal.

[21] In 1939–1940, Lloyd Triestino ran a sort of "ferry service" between Italy and Shanghai, bringing in thousands of refugees a month - Germans, Austrians, and a few Czechs.

In late 1940, they obtained visas from Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kaunas, to travel from Keidan, already Soviet-occupied Lithuania, via Siberia and Vladivostok to Kobe, Japan.

[24] Finally, a wave of more than 18,000 Ashkenazi Jews from Germany, Austria, and Poland immigrated to Shanghai; that ended with the Attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan in December 1941.

The authorities were unprepared for massive immigration, and the arriving refugees faced harsh conditions in the impoverished Hongkou District: 10 per room, near-starvation, disastrous sanitation, and scant employment.

Faced with language barriers, extreme poverty, rampant disease, and isolation, the refugees still transitioned from being supported by welfare agencies to establishing a functioning community.

Jewish cultural life flourished: schools were established, newspapers were published, theaters produced plays, sports teams participated in training and competitions and even cabarets thrived.

Although not numerous, “the fact that interracial marriages were able to take place among the relatively conservative Jewish communities demonstrated the considerable degree of cultural interaction between the Jews and the Chinese” in Shanghai.

[29] After Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, the wealthy Baghdadi Jews, many of whom were British subjects, were interned, and American charitable funds ceased.

JDC liaison Laura Margolis, who came to Shanghai, attempted to stabilize the situation by getting permission from the Japanese authorities to continue her fundraising effort and turned to the Russian Jews, who arrived before 1937 and were exempt from the new restrictions, for assistance.

[30][31] During a trial in Germany relating to the Shanghai Ghetto, Fritz Wiedemann reported that Josef Meisinger had told him that he got the order from Himmler to persuade the Japanese to take measures against the Jews.

Later, a subordinate, the interpreter of Meisinger, Karl Hamel, reported to U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) agents that the Japanese, after some consideration, believed in this thesis.

For the Japanese, this official document made clear that, in particular, the large number of refugees who had fled to Shanghai from 1937 onwards represented the highest "risk potential".

While the Nazis regarded their Japanese allies as "Honorary Aryans", they were determined that the Final Solution to the Jewish Question would also be applied to the Jews in Shanghai.

Without hesitation and knowing the fate of his community hung on his answer, Reb Kalish told the translator (in Yiddish): "Zugim weil wir senen orientalim—Tell him [the Germans hate us] because we are Orientals."

On 18 February 1943, the occupying Japanese authorities declared a "Designated Area for Stateless Refugees" and ordered those who arrived after 1937 to move their residences and businesses within it by 18 May, three months later.

[3] About 18,000 Jews were forced to relocate to a 3/4 square mile area of Shanghai's Hongkou district, where many lived in group homes called "Heime" or "Little Vienna".

[34] The English version of the order read: The designated area is bordered on the west by the line connecting Chaoufoong, Muirhead, and Dent Roads; on the east by Yangtzepoo Creek; on the south by the line connecting East Seward, Muirhead, and Wayside Roads; and on the North by the boundary of the International Settlement.

Refugees in the ghetto improvised their own shelters, with one family surviving the bombing under a bed with a second mattress on top, mounted on two desks.

They participated in an underground network to obtain and circulate information and were involved in some minor sabotage and in providing assistance to downed Allied aircrews.