Shanghai Sanctuary: Chinese and Japanese Policy toward European Jewish Refugees during World War Ⅱ

摘要

When doors began to slam shut on Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe, the city of Shanghai (which could still be accessed without entry visas) became a unlikely haven for numerous desperate refugees. The treaty port would eventually shelter nearly twenty thousand European Jews between 1938 and 1941, although most of these individuals were herded by the Japanese into a ghetto area in the north of the city after the outbreak of the Pacific War. In her study of this little-known wartime sanctuary, Gao Bei paints a fascinatingly intricate picture of the political forces and fluxes which ultimately contributed to the arrival of these Jewish refugees in Shanghai. Her work is underpinned by an array of hitherto under-utilised Chinese and Japanese archival sources which provide several intriguing new insights into East Asian perceptions ofjews during the late 1930s and early 1940s.