Experts say China's state-run outlets draw attention to the 20,000 Jews who took refuge in Shanghai during WWII to deflect criticism of the regime's treatment of minority Uighurs
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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.