From Berlin to Shanghai

Transcription

1 From Berlin to Shanghai Leslie Starobin Distributed by Pearl S. Buck International in commemoration of the exhibit Jewish Flight into China, January through August, 2017

2 It was a dark, ruddy dawn, and through a small square hole of a window, where the tattered paper fluttered, a glimpse of bronze sky gleamed. Pearl S. Buck, The Good Earth In the nineteen-eighties, Henry Tischler inherited the library his parents transported from Berlin to Shanghai in As he opened the tomes, a waft of odors filled his nostrils. Henry discovered paper pulp dusted with mildew and insects petrified on foxed pages. In some monographs, the residue of glue still clung to creased corners. And in other titles, whole sheets were missing, mysteriously lifted from the bindings. Wedged between the chapters, Henry found tattered bills engraved with Chinese logograms and Asian physiognomies. The college professor speculated it was the small change that his father received for renting out his classics to other German Jews waiting out the war in Shanghai. With the slim earnings he made from his circulating library, Helmut was able to procure an apartment at 21/12 Hwo Shan Wayside Road, in the heart of Hongkou, a square mile area dubbed the Jewish Ghetto. Here, 100,000 Shanghaiese resided alongside 20,000 displaced Europeans. 1 The least fortunate newcomers lived in dormitories set up by Jewish agencies. On 138 Ward Road, where Helmut s library was located, one shelter or Heime as they are called in German housed twelve hundred people. 2 Unable to work, these refugees had limitless hours, day after day, year after year, to read and wait for the war s final chapter. My family s story begins on Kristallnacht, Henry said, on the night of broken glass, when the Nazis ignited a wave of pogroms against its Jewish citizens. Their enterprises were looted and destroyed, synagogues and hospitals set on fire, and cemeteries desecrated, Marcia Ristaino stated in Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai. During the aftermath, more than 25,000 Jews were rounded up, arrested, and sent to concentration camps. 3 Henry s grandfather Georg Zander was among those detained on November 9, Henry explained: The SS came looking for my grandfather and my father, but they were out surveying what had taken place. When they returned and heard that the Germans had been to the apartment, they responded very differently. My father ran and hid. My grandfather, who had fought in World War I, sat down and waited for them. He considered himself a German military person, and he said emphatically that they couldn t do anything to him. I m a German and I was in the military. When the SS returned, they arrested my grandfather and took him to Dachau. At that moment in time, it was a prison, a place of intimidation, not yet a concentration camp. After Kristallnacht, any illusions still held by the Zander and Tischler families Engagement Announcement for Alice Zander and Helmut Tischler, 1937 German Newspaper Published for Refugee Community in Shanghai Headline: Stalin Hopes for Hitler s Help

3 that their lives could continue unabated under Hitler s regime vanished. The Nazis invalidated passports held by Jews and issued new ones stamped with a red letter J for Jude. Those citizens who did not have obvious Jewish names received passports with Hebraic middle names Isaac for the men, Sara for the women. 4 Henry, who studied the Shanghai Jewish refugee community for his doctoral dissertation in sociology, described one of the only options open to his desperate relatives, who left Berlin on February 28, Why Shanghai? The Japanese had invaded China, and there was no passport control set up yet. So people landed in Shanghai, got off the boat, and since there was no one there to ask you what you were doing there, nor anyone guarding the door you just walked in... In fall 1939, that window closed when authorities imposed visa requirements. Henry is still perplexed as to whether his father had packed Pearl Buck s classic to wile away the hours on the SS Conte Biancamano, an Italian ocean liner with express service to Shanghai. 6 Had he hoped to acquaint himself with the ways of the Chinese? Or had he envisioned himself running a library? Or was The Good Earth simply the perfect vehicle to conceal the currency he smuggled out of Berlin? Jews departing Germany could take only ten marks in cash with them. But Henry s parents had more than four dollars at their disposal, when they disembarked at the Asian haven. Helmut had duped the Nazi emigration authorities. He had slipped bills between the pages of his hardbacks, and then glued the corners shut without a trace of adhesive staining the paper. Henry speculated, Maybe that s why my father brought the collection. So he could hide the contraband. One U.S. dollar was quite valuable for that time. Herr Tischler Not one greenback surfaced in Sinclair Lewis s Babbitt, when Henry rummaged through the library in 2008, choosing which classics to save and which ones to discard. Amidst the stacks, he discovered newspapers charting the war. From , the exiled population in Shanghai, which included seasoned journalists, had published weekly editions. On December 27, 1939, Der Shanghai Woch ran this historic headline: Stalin hofft auf Hitler s Hilfe Stalin Hopes for Hitler s help.

4 By the time this headline had been printed, more European Jews had taken shelter in Shanghai than in any other city in the world. Today few traces exist of this community of over 20,000 Jews. 8 During their sojourn in China, they established a rich, cultural life that included literature, journalism, publishing, broadcasting, and theatrical productions. The refugees Germanic language and customs were distinct from the traditions of the Baghdadi and Russian Jews who had settled in this Asian metropolis earlier in the century. The Ohel Moshe Synagogue, built by Russian Jews in 1927 and now the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum, served as a religious center for the exiles. It was not until after liberation that the Jews of Shanghai fully comprehended what had transpired in Europe. It was a real shock for my parents and grandparents to discover what had really happened and what they had escaped, Henry said. They really weren t aware of the concentration camps only after the war. If my grandfather hadn t been arrested on Kristallnacht, and imprisoned in Dachau, and released with the stipulation that he leaves the country, my parents wouldn t have left. And if the port of Shanghai hadn t been open, I wouldn t be here. If I were fleeing a country, Henry stated, I am not sure that I would take all these negatives. I might take the actual photographs, but the negatives? Here a debonair Helmut Tischler photographed in the years right before the Nazis took power stares back at the viewer. During the early years of the regime, my father was able to work because he didn t look Jewish. He had blue eyes. When he walked into the stores, he had to salute Heil Hitler. That ploy ended for the salesman on Kristallnacht. From Shanghai my father wrote back to the Welfare Agency for Jews in Germany looking for assistance, Henry said. And they answered: We have received your letter of April 2 nd of 1940, and we are sorry that we can not do anything for your request. Helmut s Circulating Library Helmut s penchant for literature and photography may date back to this childhood portrait of him posing with his older brothers Adolf and Heinz at the Baum Bros. studio in Berlin.

5 Henry is still mystified by his father s incentive to cart the tomes to Shanghai and then open a circulating library in September When Helmut finally departed China in 1947, he carried a reference letter from the Juedische Gemeinde Communal Association of Central European Jews in Shanghai certifying his novel enterprise. Henry said, My father wasn t a professor. He wasn t a former scholar who was wedded to books. He wasn t even educated, because by the time he was old enough to enter the university, the doors had been closed to Jewish students in Germany. But of all the things you need to take when you are fleeing, hundreds of books? Henry has only dim memories of the country that gave his family refuge from the Nazis, but he has documentation of their refugee status. A letter dated June 4, 1947, from the United Relief and Rehabilitation Office in China, states that Helmut, Alice, and Henry Tischler are bona-fide Displaced Persons of German nationality. Henry s parents had met at a Berlin social in 1936, and among the sentimental ephemerae that the newlyweds had packed in their steamer trunk, along with their wedding photograph, was their engagement announcement Alice Zander Helmut Tischler Verlobte 1937 decorated with a green cloverleaf and the words, You bring me Good Luck. A porcelain teacup and saucer, inscribed with the date 27 Feb 1911, also went into the trunk. Still glistening on the china is a birthday wish: Joy for Father, Happiness for Mother, today our Helmut is one year old. Henry, born at war s end September 3, 1945 teetered on die gute erde. Shanghai the port of last resort served only as a transitory harbor for Europeans during the Second World War. After the civil war began in China in 1946, refugees once again searched for new havens and countries where they would be able to settle permanently. 11 Reading H. G. Wells On the tenth day of November 1947, Henry Ludwig Tischler appeared before the Vice Consul of the United States in Shanghai. The blond affiant stood only 2'11". Upon entry to the U.S., an official of Immigration and Naturalization Service stamped the backside of the toddler s affidavit. The circular imprint reads: Admitted, Dec. 30, 1947, San Francisco, Calif.

6 1 Casey Hall, Jewish Life in Shanghai Ghetto. The New York Times. June 19, German and Austrian Jewish Refugees in Shanghai, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, encyclopedia last updated July 2, Marcia Reynders Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities of Shanghai (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001) 99 4 Holocaust History, 1938 The Fateful Year Yad VaShem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center 5 German and Austrian Jewish Refugees in Shanghai, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, encyclopedia last updated July 2, Ristaino, James Griffiths, Shanghai s Forgotten Jewish Past. The Atlantic. November 21, Irene Eber, Jewish Exiles in Wartime China (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008) Introduction, Kindle edition 10 Hall, html?_r=0 11 Eber, Introduction Reading The Good Earth

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