Shanghai Ghetto
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Movie Reviews of Shanghai Ghetto
Movie Review: worth watching
Summary: 5 Stars
Shanghai Ghetto is an intriguing documentary about Jews who were allowed to leave Nazi controlled areas and go to China. The narration is matter of fact. The interviews with survivors are a little repetitive but informative. For people who think they have seen as much as there is to discover about the Holocaust, this is a welcome addition to the archives.Movie Review: A must see!
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw this film initially at the SF Jewish Film Festival. Before this initial viewing I was unfamiliar with the imigration of Jews to Shanghai during the holocust. The film is informative and beautifully made. A must see for WWII, hollocast and documentary film junkies.Movie Review: Fascinating subject, OK production
Summary: 4 Stars
This is an OK production of a fascinating subject.
The information is good. They interview Prof. David Kranzler, the expert in the field, as well as other knowledgeable professors. These are interwoven with interviews of a handful of actual survivors. These, too, are enlightening, real and touch the heart.
The timeline follows these survivors, who all escaped Germany in 1938. It relates their early memories of life in Germany, Kristallnacht, their troubles getting out, their travel to Shanghai, their attempts to making a living and establish themselves there, the effects of Japan's entry into the war in 1941 and their consequent move into the unsanitary, overcrowded poor section of the city known as Hongkew, their difficulties fending off disease, starvation and anti-Semitism (not from the Chinese so much as the Japanese and non-Jewish ethnicities like Russians), the Allied bombing in July 1945, their liberation and discovery of the horrors of the Holocaust in Germany which they, only in retrospect, learned of and learned how lucky they were to have avoided.
It's a compelling story, a case of truth being stranger than fiction.
However, they missed at least one major part of the story. There were more than 2,000 refugees (many of whom had been teachers and students in one of Jewry's most prestigious educational institutions, the Mirrer Yeshiva) that arrived in Shanghai in 1941 who escaped Nazi Germany and then Soviet-controlled Lithuania, who then obtained visas miraculously, traveled on the Trans-Siberian railroad before landing in Japan and then being deported, at the start of the hostilities with the US, to Shanghai. This group was not German. Their experiences before and even during the war (they reestablished their Yeshiva there) were very different. I personally was hoping to learn more about them in this documentary. But there was not even a word about it. Not even a hint.
There was also other parts of the Shanghai experience that were not even hinted to: e.g. how the Nazis sent an SS organizer to get the Japanese to liquidate the Jews in Shanghai but who met resistance because the Japanese believed Nazi propoganda that International Jewry was not something to be dealt with lightly. There were some real heroes: e.g. the Japanese diplomat who risked his life to save Jews. But none of that was touched upon.
All in all, though, it's a valuable documentary with much to offer. There's not a lot of photographs of Shanghai back then, and even less film footage, but that's to be expected. (You had no Fritz Hipplers, i.e. Nazi film producers on hand making a final record of a soon-to-be-exterminated people.) It skips some historical moments, like the end of the war in Europe (I would like to have known of the survivors' reactions to that), but it does cover other major historical moments of the War and Holocaust, including the survivors listening to German, Russian and American radio broadcasts to find out what was happening in the outside world.
This documentary is definitely worth a viewing. I can also see it being something good for a classroom. It's just that the motivated teacher and parent, as well as the individual who wants to be well-informed, will have to fill in some of the gaps with other sources.
Movie Review: Lost Story of Painful Escape - A Good Cinematic Experience
Summary: 4 Stars
A couple of years before World War II, Europe and the United States turned their back on millions Jews in Europe that tried to escape an increasing persecution. Nations closed their borders after a political meeting between several nations with Germany in the center that led nowhere. Hitler used the result of the meeting as an invitation to increase the intensity of the Jewish persecution. Some Jews were fortunate enough to escape to neighboring countries while many were escorted back to the German border and handed to the Gestapo. However, far away on the other side of the world some fortunate Jews that had the financial means to escape found a loophole - Shanghai.
Japan and China had been in war, which led to the occupation of Shanghai. The Japanese forces were not checking passports, as people arrived to Shanghai by ships. The Chinese government had been abandoned, as was the passport control. Thus, Jews could leave Germany, even though their passports had been restricted or revoked, to peacefully enter Shanghai. A pleasurable four-week voyage through the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean led the escaping Jews to their destination, Shanghai.
Arrivals were initially shocked by the environment to which they arrived. This culture crash had its foundation in several new experiences such as the extreme humidity, high temperature, different written and spoken language, and new food among many other things. Yet, the 20,000 Jews that arrived found a way to cope in the new society. This is much thanks to the British Jews that had lived in Shanghai since the beginning of the century who had acquired much wealth. In the years before World War II and in the beginning of the war the newcomers basically founded their own miniature society within Shanghai. Coffee shops, newspapers, sports events, and much more offered an outlet where the Jews could live a life much like in Europe.
As the war increasingly intensified the Germans who were allies with Japan pressured the Japanese to create a ghetto in Shanghai for the Jews. The Japanese slowly established this ghetto, but it was very unlike the ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. Nonetheless, food became scarce while starvation and disease made life much more difficult, which even cost several people their lives. Despite the difficulties in Shanghai, the Jews never learned how lucky they were until the end of the war. When the terribly tragic news of the death camps in Europe reached them in Shanghai this moment brought them a heavy sadness, as they realized how lucky they were while reflecting on their relatives and family members' horrific fate.
Shanghai Ghetto offers an interesting cinematic journey, as a number of people offer first hand accounts of what it was like to live in the Shanghai Ghetto. One man tells how traumatic it was to experience the bombing of Shanghai at the end of the war. A woman also expresses her contempt for Germany and how she now has no surviving relatives, which is very hard to hear, as one cannot even imagine the pain she must feel. These stories that the audience experiences through film provides and reinforces an important notion - let this never happen again.
Movie Review: fascinating history, compelling stories
Summary: 4 Stars
This documentary recounts the history of some 20,000 Jews who fled 8,000 miles from Europe to Shanghai during World War II when most all other countries had closed their borders to them. At the time, much of China, including Shanghai, was occupied and controlled by Japan. Because of their own racist stereotypes, the Japanese feared the Jews, and so allowed the refugees to exist in the "Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees" with the help of wealthy Baghdadi and poorer Russian Jews who had already settled there, along with western aid. A rich cultural life emerged that included schools, theater, newspapers, and music. As one of the poorest sections of Shanghai, life for the local Chinese who lived together with the Jews was often worse. After Pearl Harbor, American attacks on the Japanese in China made the horrible conditions in Shaghai even worse. The film draws upon archival footage, diaries, letters, historians, and, most powerfully of all, interviews with a half dozen survivors who were children of eight to ten years old at the time.