“Remember only that I was innocent
and, just like you, mortal on that day,
I, too, had had a face marked by rage, by pity and joy,
quite simply, a human face!”
Benjamin Fondane, Exodus
Murdered at Auschwitz, 1944
Those who have visited Yad Vashem might have read the poem on the wall of the Name Hall. As we commemorate the Yom HaShoah or the Holocaust Memorial Day, the name of a Chinese lady has been lingering in my mind Nadine Hwang with many different identities: cross-dresser, lawyer, horse rider, car driver, pilot, colonel, polo, cricket and ice hockey player, lesbian cosmopolitan, spy against Nazis, internee in a Nazi camp for women, etc. Her life is probably one of the most forgotten stories in modern Chinese history and till now almost nothing was written about her in Chinese language…