China: Battle of Shanghai in 1937 results in Shanghai being occupied by Imperial Japan – but in a legal quirk of history, the city became the only place in the world not requiring a classic visa or a passport. Into this legal vacuum of sorts, starting slowly in August, 1938, eventually almost 20,000 European Jews made their way, generally by lumbering railroad across vast Siberia into ultimately a one square–mile area in the Hongku District of Shanghai, to be known as the “Shanghai Ghetto.”
Chinese Consul General Ho Feng Shan in Vienna, Austria and Japanese consul Sugihara in Kaunas, Lithuania heavily impact Jewish history at this point. Both issue the thousands of special Temporary Visas necessary to provide a legal patina to the life–saving and historically unique immigration. [Shan over the 1938–1940 span; Sugihara in c. August 1940].
Subsequent Nazi pressure on their Japanese allies to hand over the Shanghai Jews in 1943–1944, resulted only in Japanese stonewalling. It is not clear to this day as to why. Some say that the Japanese protected the Jews out of loyalty to Jewish–American financier Jacob Schiff who financed the Japanese side of the Russo–Japanese War earlier in the century.
In any event, the various Jewish relief organizations worldwide provided massive “no questions asked” funds to the Shanghai Jews… The famous line is that a telegram was sent to the AJDC, the American Joint Distribution Committee in NY advising that funds were needed, with the response being, “Fine. Just give us the figure.”
In parallel, the Shanghai presence and activism of legendary ex–Baghdad Jews Victor Sassoon and Horace Kadoorie provided crucial local political leverage over the duration…
Among many notable “Shanghai graduates”:
Future artist Peter Max, future Hollywood Executive Michael Medavoy, future US Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal, future Israel–Asian financial mogul Shaul Eisenberg, as well as noted future Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe….(Chinese language skills included).
[See later entry 1940 CE: SUGIHARA]