Customer Reviews

Strange Haven: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Shanghai

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As some one who lived as a youngster in the wartime Shanghai Jewish Ghetto during the same time as the author, the book provides a very poignant, detailed and accurate description of what it was like, for impoverished European Jews to cope under the Japanese occupation, while living with equally poor Chinese families in over crowded slum like quarters. The author alluded numerous times to the horn-of-plenty the small orthodox community seemed to enjoyed and of which he personally benefited as well, while every one else had barely enough to prevent starvation. How the Yeshiva could have smuggled in enough US currency, (inviting a death penalty if caught by the Japanese) and distribute $30 US dollars a month, ( fortune at that time) to each family has always been a mystery to me. The hypocracy of a Jewish religious community stuffing themselves with fresh kosher meat, milk, butter and vegetable while the rest of us suffered from malnutrition, needs some further explaining. It has left a permanent bad taste in my mouth. Aside from this, Tobias has written a well balanced and touching account of his own personal, his family's and that of 18,000 other Jewish refugees' struggle to survive in the war time ghetto of Shanghai under Japanese bayonettes. We who lived through it will always have a feeling of gratitude to the equally suffering Chinese people. Claude Spingarn, cespingar@aol.com

I first heard about this book when the author and I appeared on the same radio program to discuss our books about Shanghai. (My book is "Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City, 1842-1949.") In the course of my research I read nearly all of the memoirs published by members of Shanghai's refugee Jewish community. All have their virtues, but Tobias' is one of the more thoughtful and reflective. It also has a novelistic flavor, especially the beginning when he recounts-sadly and movingly-his family's departure from Germany. The story he tells us is indeed strange, on so many levels, yet there is an all-pervading sense of the events the author describes as being all too urgent and real. "Strange Haven" captures Shanghai's details, its look, sounds and, above all, smells, wonderfully well. He goes into great detail, as well, about the experiences of the Jewish refugees in Hongkew, the area the Japanese turned into their version of a Jewish ghetto. Above all, "Strange Haven" is a story of survival in an extraordinary time and place.

A wonderful narrative and photographs of a journey from 1938 (Kristallnacht) Germany to Japanese occupied Shanghai and then to the United States after the surrender of Japan but before the liberation of Shanghai from Chiang Kai-shek by Mao. Tobias describes the day to day struggle to live and survive in a foreign land, waiting for the conclusion of World War II. Throughout this journey Tobias continually lives with the memories of his dead family members who were unable to flee Nazi Europe. At the end of the book Tobias takes us back to Shanghai to revisit his memories.

There are many surprises for anyone who doesn't know the details of Hitler's Germany. Prior to 1940, Jews sent to concentration camps were released if they could prove that they would leave Germany. Jews did not need passports or visas to enter Japanese controlled China. The Japanese respected Jewish history and had difficulty accepting the Nazi propaganda. Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul-general in Kovno, Lithuania, who made possible the escape of many Polish Jews to Shanghai, returned to Japan to live the post war years in dishonor for defying orders.

At its core this well written book describes the coming of maturity of a sensitive Jewish boy and his unique education in Jewish schools and the Mirer Yeshiva in Shanghai. Tobias avoids cliché and appears to deliver an accurate description of a unique personal story of World War II and its aftermath.

I had no idea that Shanghai became a haven for Jewish people during the war. I cannot imagine how people lived in Shanghai with so many hardships but I realize it was better than dying during the Holocaust. It just shows you how much you can endure when you absolutely have to do so. This book is very informative in dealing with how the Chinese people contributed to the survival of so many Jewish people.