by Ada Zhang
NEW YORK, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- As China prepares to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War in September, stories of international wartime solidarity are drawing renewed attention.
Among them is the story of Ellen Kracko, whose parents survived Holocaust and found refuge in Shanghai after fleeing Nazi Germany, joining more than 20,000 European Jews who were admitted into the eastern Chinese city at a time when many countries had closed their borders.
Last fall, upon the birth of her third great-grandchild, Kracko named the baby Ruth in honor of her mother, who witnessed the end of the war on the streets of Shanghai. "I couldn't help but think of Shanghai," she said in a recent interview. "It was because the city had sheltered my family, that the line continued."
Born in Shanghai in 1947, Kracko is part of a small but determined group dedicated to preserving the city's extraordinary humanitarian legacy. This once-obscure history is now gaining renewed attention, showcased through recent exhibitions in New York, including a 2023 pop-up in Lower Manhattan and programs at institutions like the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Center for Jewish History.
At a time when many nations refused Jewish refugees, Shanghai, despite being war-torn and occupied, opened its doors to them, said Kracko.
"My grandfather, Max Chaim, fought for the German army in World War I," she said. "They didn't think of leaving until Kristallnacht." On Nov. 9, 1938, the Nazi regime launched a brutal pogrom across Germany and Austria. "That was when they realized they couldn't stay," Kracko said.
As the Chaims, who had lived in Germany for generations, sought escape, they found Western nations unwelcoming. The United States imposed strict immigration quotas under the 1924 Immigration Act. At the 1938 Evian Conference in France, representatives from 32 countries met to address the refugee crisis, yet almost none was willing to take in more Jews, according to the Brookings Institution.
"They tried the United States, France, Canada. There were quota numbers, but they couldn't get visas," Kracko said.
At that time, Japanese-occupied Shanghai did not require entry documents. Yet, German authorities still required an exit visa or proof of onward travel before allowing Jews to leave, according to the Jewish Museum Vienna.
Ho Fengshan, then Chinese Consul-General in Vienna, issued thousands of visas that enabled Austrian Jews to leave for Shanghai. His efforts later became widely recognized for their humanitarian significance.
The Chaims, though not in Austria, were confronted with the same daunting restrictions. Entry to any safe destination required not just hope, but luck.
Then, a stroke of incredible fortune: her father walked into a shipping agency just as a last-minute cancellation freed up 16 tickets to Shanghai. "They got out," Kracko said. "That's how they survived."
The family packed everything they could. Her father built a false bottom into a dresser to hide silver and candlesticks. Her aunt stitched valuables into coat linings. In 1939, they boarded the ship bound for Shanghai, joining thousands of Jews who would later settle in the city's Hongkou district.
Despite being scarred by conflict, Hongkou emerged as a crucial sanctuary. It was there that refugees established bakeries, clinics and their own newspapers, rapidly building a resilient and tight-knit community known as "Little Vienna." According to the Jewish Museum Vienna, the district featured cafes, sausage stands and wine taverns, as well as musical performances organized by refugee artists.
In 1943, bowing to pressure from their Nazi allies, the Japanese invaders in Shanghai confined Jews to a roughly 1-square-mile (2.6 square km) ghetto, known as "Designated Area for Stateless Refugees."
"My mother always remembered a kind Chinese woman who lived across the street," Kracko said. "They couldn't speak the same language. One day the woman brought her a bowl of noodles with a smile. My mother gave her cookies the next day. That was how they communicated."
According to the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, local families often gave up rooms for Jewish refugees, lent utensils and helped them find work.
Kracko was one of more than 400 "Shanghai babies." Her birth certificate lists her nationality as "stateless." "That's what we were," she said. "No country. No papers. But we had Shanghai."
The war ended in 1945. Ruth Chaim heard the news in the streets, with neighbors cheering and crying. "The war is over!" someone shouted.
In a striking portrait of survival, the family posed for a photograph a year later amid the rubble: her father, dignified with his pipe, and her mother in her dress, stood as a testament to perseverance against a landscape of bombed-out walls.
"They were German Jews," Kracko said. "Even in ruins, they needed to look proper."
The family remained in Shanghai until 1949. In 2006, Ruth returned at the age of 87 and reunited with her Chinese neighbors.
"To the people of 1939 Shanghai, I say thank you," Kracko later wrote in a reflection for the Holocaust Council of Greater MetroWest. "You let these refugees in, let them live among you. I get goosebumps just thinking about it."
"You just hope the next generation remembers," she said. "Not just what happened, but who helped, and who didn't." ■