Page 72 - AACL 25th anniversary

Anniversary Celebration of
Albanian American Civic League
Shanghai’s city emblem is the Magnolia flower and a boat with five sails, reflecting the city’s start as a harbor.
THE SHANGHAI RESCUE OF JEWS DURING THE HOLOCAUST
On the occasion of its 25th anniversary, the Albanian American Foundation wants to recognize the still relatively unknown rescue of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust by the Chinese in Shanghai. Most Americans do not know that during World War II China allowed European Jewry fleeing the Nazis to enter the country without any papers and to stay as long as they wanted to. And few know that Shanghai was ready to receive them, because a thriving Jewish community had grown up in Shanghai with the opening of China’s largest treaty port there in 1842. Also, Jews had arrived in China as far back as the 8th century as merchants trading along the Silk Road. In 1932, the Shanghai Stock Exchange published its membership, and 40 percent were Sephardic Jews. A Jewish settlement was established in the city of Kaifeng, where a synagogue was built in 1131, and thousands of Jews worshipped openly. By the early twentieth century, sizable Jewish settlements had grown up in the cities of Harbin, Ningbo, and Tianjin, including Russian Jews fleeing pogroms.
After Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany in March 1938, the Nazis required Jews trying to leave the country to have entry visas or boat tickets to another country. Most countries refused to alter their restrictive immigration policies, and so Jews trying to escape the Nazi reign of terror found themselves turned away by foreign embassies in Germany and Austria. But there was one exception: Dr. Feng-Shan Ho, the Chinese Consul General in Vienna from 1938 to 1940, defied the orders of his superior, the Chinese ambassador in Berlin, and issued visas to China to 30,000 Jews. 19,000 Jews reached Shanghai, either by boat from Italy or overland via the Soviet Union, and remained in Shanghai for some time after the war. Others used their Chinese visas to exit Austria and reach other destinations, such as Canada, Palestine, the Philippines, and Australia. In addition to Dr. Ho’s courageous role, wealthy residents in Shanghai helped sustain the lives of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust until the end of the war in 1945.
When asked after the war, why he saved Jews, Dr. Ho said that, “I thought it only natural to feel compassion and to want to help. From the standpoint of humanity, that is the way it should be.”
In 2001, four years after his death, Dr. Ho was given the “Righteous among the Nations” award by Yad Vashem, and in 2007, commemorative citizenship in the State of Israel was posthumously bestowed on him.
Knowledge of the Shanghai rescue has also been greatly aided by Dr. Feng-Shan Ho’s daughter, Manli Ho, a journalist living in San Francisco, who began researching her father’s saving role after he died in 1997. Since then, she has spoken to audiences around the world about her father’s rescue of Austrian Jews and the importance of individual efforts to stop racism and genocide.
The Boards of the Albanian American Civic League and the Albanian American Foundation believe that it could not be a more opportune time to focus international attention on Shanghai’s saving role during the Holocaust and on two ancient peoples, the Albanians and the Chinese, both of whom have close relationships with the United States and Israel.
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Saluting Albanian Religious Tolerance in an Age of Intolerance