My parents had a good life in Germany before the Nazis came to power.  In 1939, they were given two weeks to leave Germany or else they would be picked up by the Nazis.

 

My parents left Germany by train to Italy.  They then went by ship to Shanghai, China.   They wanted to come to America but were told no.  China was the only safe haven for 20,000 stateless Jewish people to go to.  

 

It was a great shock to them when they arrived to Shanghai in 1939.  They were taken from the ship and taken put onto a truck and taken into the Ghetto.  

In 1943, I was born in the Hongkew Ghetto in Shanghai, China.  I remember we lived in one room and there were rats there.  There was starvation and diseases.  Cholera was rampant.  It was bad, so bad. My parents left Berlin by train to Italy and then by ship to Shanghai.  My father bought tickets aboard a cruise ship, believe it or not.  When they finally got to China, it was a great shock.  They were taken from the ship and put onto a truck and taken into the Ghetto.  My father was 34 and my mother was 17.  My father told my mother that he would take her out of Germany to China but only if she married him.  He died one year after they came to America.  My mother remarried to Joseph Moritz and they were married for twenty-five years.  

 

The Japanese took the Ghetto over from the Chinese shortly after my parents arrived.  Apparently, Hitler told the Japanese to annihilate the Jews.  The Japanese did not do so as they saw the value of having Jews.  They knew that eventually the Jews would want to go to America and they did not want to upset America at that time.  22,000 Jews lived in the ghetto.  

 

Once a year, representatives from HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) would come to the ghetto to check on us.  I remember sitting on a bleachers with about twenty-five other children.  I touched one of the HIAS woman’s fur coats.  My mother told me to stop.  I touched her fur coat and said “she’s a bear, she’s a bear!” I was four years old at the time.

 

Later my mother worked for the Jewish Community Center, she made sandwiches and soup in what later came to be known as “Raisi’s Kitchen.”  When someone was hungry, she would give them a sandwich, a Danish, and a drink for free.  I told her that she could get fired for doing that.  She said, “I’m going to feed whoever is hungry.”   

This should always be recorded in history and forever be taught in our schools.  Shanghai was a haven for 22,000 European Jews.  It’s important that the Shanghai Ghetto be preserved.