The Jews of Shanghai

Trip Start Sep 01, 2007
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Trip End Oct 22, 2007


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Friday, September 21, 2007

We started our second day in Shanghai by going on the most fascinating walking tour of areas where the Jews of Shanghai lived in the 19th and 20th centuries before the rise of communism. Most notably where the Sassoon family and most desperately were the Jews who fled the Pogroms of Russia and Hitler's persecution of the Second World War.
 

Our Israeli guide, Dvir, who has been living in Shanghai for over 6 years, told us some amazing stories. He is also a journalist so has made a short documentary on what has become a huge and potentially lifelong project, trying to find all the gravestones from the Jewish graves of 4 destroyed cemeteries! He has so far found 86 gravestones and, as we saw in his documentary, made some of the surviving relatives very happy. Dvir's website is www.shanghai-jews.com or he can be contacted by email shanghaijews@hotmail.com or by mobile on (+86) 130 0214 6702.
After the tour we went and walked through the People's Park and admired some more of the Shanghai architecture. Unfortunately a lot of the older buildings have been torn down in the name of progress but the results most certainly provide a great deal of entertainment. Before we travelled to Shanghai I was looking forward to seeing this new architecture as it appears that the only limitation on the architects is their imagination. They did not fail to impress us!

It was time to head back to the hotel for another important reason for visiting Shanghai, it was Yom Kippur (Jewish Day of Atonement) that evening and the next day. We joined the Chabad Rabbi in our hotel for a very special Yom Kippur as it was also the end of my Year of Kaddish (Mourning Period) for my Father who very sadly passed away in November 2006. I am really grateful to Rabbi Avraham, Annie and all the people I met who were all very kind. We broke our Fast with an amazing buffet put on by Chabad. Later Annie and I went with some new friends, Marshall and Susan, to the bar on the 46th floor of our hotel for a drink. We were not drunk but the room was definitely spinning, actually the whole restaurant and bar was revolving :-)
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