Jewish Holocaust survivors and scholars have recalled the dark period in history as they mourned the victims on Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls this year on Thursday and Friday.
Lili Feliess, an 87-year-old survivor, is now living in central Israel's Kfar Saba. She attended at a Berlin primary school before the outbreak of World War II in 1939. With the worsening persecution of Jews in Germany and across Europe at that time, an increasing number sought to leave the troubles but many countries rejected taking in Jewish refugees. Feliess recalls' her parents selling all their possessions and the anxious wait for any country to open their door to them.
"My father was also in the travel agency. And one day (the travel agent) said, 'I have a passage for two and a half persons. Are you ready?' My father agreed, of course, very quickly. So we came with this ship through Italy, through Africa, until Hong Kong and then Shanghai," said Feliess.
Feliess was only 10 years old when she arrived in Shanghai by sea. Having come from a wealthy middle-class family she now found herself a poor Jewish refugee. However, she did not feel uncomfortable about the decline in living standards.
"The letters my parents wrote [are] in this book, everything [was] written down, what happened and the way it happened. And one sentence my father wrote was that I never complained, even though I was a little girl. I didn't complain because I felt secure with my parents," she said.
Feliess' family was not very clear exactly what was happening in Europe at first. Their relatives back in Berlin wrote letters for help, in the hope that they could also leave Europe as soon as possible and seek refuge in Shanghai. Soon the exchange of letters stopped.
The family did not return to Berlin until the end of World War II and then found their relatives' names on the list of victims at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
Feliess has only returned to Berlin once since the end of World War II and the founding of Israel. She never again set foot in the house she used to live in and only made a brief introduction of it to her children outside her former home.
Many Jews of Iraqi descendants, who had traveled to China between the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368-1912 A.D.), are now living in Israel's Yehuda Village. During the war, they helped Jews in Europe move to Shanghai by providing funds and ships along with other Jewish groups in southeast and east Asia. Scholar Ezra Yehezkel-Shaked only learned about the history of Jewish refugees in Shanghai by chance, and he found that few other people know about their story.
Compelled by their struggles, Yehezkel-Shaked visited Jews who fled to East Asia, compiling their stories and recording videos in the hope that more people can learn about this significant period of history in more detail.
"The new generation in China will know something about this wonderful story. The Chinese accepted the refugees so nicely, only one country, only one city. So it's important, isn't it," said Yehezkel-Shaked.
The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum was founded in Jerusalem in 1953. It honors the memory of the Holocaust victims and also pays homage to over 20,000 foreign friends who helped the Jews during the darkest times. Among them, Ho Fengshan, a former diplomat with the Chinese Consulate General in Austria, provided great help to Jews in their moment of need by providing the necessary documents to flee to China.
"So having papers saying that you can go to China [in] many cases meant the difference between life and death. And we will always remember Ho for his bravery, for his generosity and for his nobility. And this is something which will (always) connect China and the Jewish people," said Irena Steinfeldt, director of the Department of the Righteous of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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