While traces of a Jewish presence in China can be found as early as the Han dynasty, which ended in the third century, the Nationalist government once seriously considered schemes to take in large numbers of Jews amid the turmoil of the interwar years. In the early 20th century, European politics was ridden with antisemitism, most obviously in Nazi Germany and the murder of 6 million in the Holocaust, but prejudice was widespread across the continent and other countries restricted entry to those
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People visiting the site of a former synagogue at the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum on the day the museum reopened to the public after an expansion project in Shanghai, December 8, 2020. (Photo by STR / AFP)
SHANGHAI, China (AFP) As an infant Kurt Wick escaped almost certain death in a Nazi concentration camp by taking refuge in Shanghai, a little-known sanctuary for thousands of Jews fleeing the Holocaust.
Now 83, he has spent the last two decades spreading the word about how the Chinese city became an unlikely safe haven from Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution.”
“They saved 20,000 Jews and if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t be able to talk to you now,” says Vienna-born Wick, who was taken by his parents on a ship from the port of Trieste for the long voyage east.