Customer Reviews

Shanghai Remembered...: Stories of Jews Who Escaped to Shanghai from Nazi Europe

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I loved this book. I did not realize that more than 20,000 Jews had escaped to Shanghai from Nazi Germany in the late 1930's. In this this book, a dozen or so of these refugees tell their stories in a very personal way. In this book, we get inside the homes, heads and hearts of the people who went through this incredible experience. Most of the book is about how these Europeans coped first with life in China and later with the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Despite their tribulations, the refugees managed to make new lives for themselves, to raise their children and create a community life as well. It is an inspiring story, very well told.

This review is written from one who also escaped to Shanghai from Nazi Europe and lived the same life as told by those interviewed for this book. Being personally acquainted with several of the individuals telling their story, made it even more interesting for me. It is a factual telling of what we, by that I mean our parents, left behind when fleeing Europe, arriving in a foreign land with no language skills and no money. It acquaints the world with facts seldom known, that indeed approximately 20,000 Jews fleeing Nazi Europe had only one destination open to them, that being Shanghai, China. It is fast paced and reads easily.

Doris Fogel

Shangai Remembered: Stories Of Jews Who Escaped To Shanghai From Nazi Europe is an competently compiled, organized and edited documentation of the Jewish escapees by Berl Falbaum. Shangai Remembered favorably depicts the individual stories of many Jewish refugees and their journey in unfamiliar territory as a result of the Nazi empowerment during and before the second World War. As a strong recommendation to all scholars of Jewish history, as well as students of World War II in general, Shangai Remembered is to be given high praise for its outstanding content and a strong recommendation for inclusion into academic and community library 20th Century History and Judaic Studies collections.

Any hardback that he me (flower girl) on its cover has to be a five-star read. A forgotten bit of history but memorable for us who lived through it.