On This Day, 80 Years Ago
A new ghetto in Japan collects “kimcha d’pischa” (charity for Passover) for European Jewry & the Orthodox conference in the U.S.
By: Yaakov Rosenfeld.
While skimming through the press of exactly eighty years ago, I was exposed to new information that I had not read about elsewhere.
The headline in “Der Morgan Journal” (a common American Jewish newspaper) tells about a new ghetto that the Japanese established for European Jewish refugees in Mukden, Manchuria.
(Japan opens a new ghetto for Jews in Mukden, Manchuria. Jan. 28th, 1944)
In the body of the news article, it is said that the new ghetto was being established while the Shanghai Ghetto was still alive and well, where thousands of Jews were imprisoned in harsh conditions.
The Shanghai Ghetto, while notorious for the harsh conditions in which the refugees were housed, including poor sanitary conditions that caused outbreaks of disease and epidemics, was still considered a good place compared to the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe as a whole, where Jews were systematically exterminated.
Of the approximately 19,000 European Jews who were imprisoned in the Shanghai Ghetto, it is known that about two thousand Jews met their death there, a relatively “small” number for that time; how ironic and tragic… However, they suffered terribly in those years, and not only because of the hot weather that European Jews weren’t accustomed to.
Z. Hirschberg, a Jew from Germany, wrote to his son who was already living in Israel:
The heat here is terrible. At the moment, it is 50 degrees, but not a dry heat like in Israel, which is easy to bear, but rather a humid and feverish heat so that the body is always covered in sweat as if smeared with phlegm, and everything goes stale and becomes sticky.
Sigmund and his wife Gertrude wrote to their relatives in the United States:
The nights were torture for those exposed to the terrible heat of the tropics, to the bites of swarms of mosquitoes and rats. The cries of the poor children bitten by mosquitoes and tossing and turning in their beds without sleep was appalling… The terrible climate is intolerable to Europeans, and there is no way we will ever get used to it. (Berlin to Shanghai, p. 40, quoted on the Yad Vashem website)
Until now, I have not heard about or found any material documenting this new ghetto established in the region of Manchuria, then under the control of the Japanese Empire and now Northeast China.
I would love to enrich this important historical canvas.
In the same newspaper, exactly eighty years ago, as mentioned, the buds of American Jewry’s disillusionment are evident in the face of the tragedy of the Holocaust which was then in full swing. Such as the following headline, which recounts the murder of Pinsk Jewry and the unimaginable number of Jewish dead. 63 thousand Jews in Pinsk and Rovno!
And in view of the situation of European Jewry in exile, for whom the gates of the Land of Israel are locked, the newspaper publishes about the Orthodox Jewish conference that will convene in two days at the Hotel Pennsylvania, where hundreds of rabbis, businessmen and heads of communities “from the Atlantic to the Pacific” will take part. This conference deserves special coverage, G-d willing in the coming days.
Rabbis from the Bronx collect money for the Vaad HaHatzala (rescue committee):
But the terrible news, the horrible news about the exterminated European Jewry, did not prevent the publication of this ad about fine whiskey, which expresses “a symbol of happiness and freedom”. In the “promoted content,” concerned readers are told that even though the distillery workers are being recruited for the war, there is an opportunity to enjoy the feeling of happiness and freedom that the fine whiskey will give you. L’chaim! (to life!):
