"I was made in China, in Shanghai," Ellen Kracko from the United States told China Daily yesterday afternoon.
On her birth certificate in English and Chinese her nationality is recorded as "stateless."
She and her 87-year-old mother, Ruth Chaim, were among the 112 Jewish refugees of World War II and their families to visit Shanghai where they escaped to from the Nazi Holocaust in Europe.
More than 40 Jewish refugees who came from the US, Germany, Australia and other countries visited their old neighborhood in Hongkou District and shared emotional memories with their former neighbors.
They walked along Huoshan Road passing in front of the former Broadway theatre. On the roof garden of the building one of the women had won the title of dancing queen and in Huoshan Park many had played as toddlers.
The old buildings and streets have been well preserved. Pan Guang, from the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, is leading a campaign to apply for UNESCO cultural heritage status for the former Jewish community in Shanghai.
"Hongkou never forgets you," he told the Jewish visitors yesterday, "Your stories are kept intact here."
Shanghai was an open harbor in the 1930s and received 25,000 Jewish refugees during World War II. "The cultural heritage doesn't necessarily have to be relics from the far past," Pan said, "but it's important for all humans to memorize the pain that war has caused to all people."
He called on the former refugees to donate old documents, passports and pictures. "All these may be very important for the successful application of world cultural heritage."
Gary Matzdorff greeted old neighbours in the Shanghai dialect after leaving the city 58 years ago. He even met his first girlfriend at the reunion, Inge Booker. Matzdorff and Booker came to Shanghai from the same German town but only met as refugees.
Matzdorff still has cards which were made showing his name in Chinese. They were given to him by a Chinese friend. "I worked as the secretary to a coal dealer at that time," he said. "Sometimes when the boss went out I had nothing to do so I learned Chinese from Jimmy the doorman."
Stephen Lange brought his teenage daughter along to the reunion in Shanghai. As the son of a former Jewish refugee he felt it important to have the history remembered and shared by the generations. "It brings me a sense of responsibility and obligation to give back to the world." The psychologist hangs his father's medical certificate from old Shanghai in his office in the US.
The visitors became more and more emotional as they walked through the old streets to Huoshan Park. Tears were shed between stories and recollections.
They signed a petition for world peace and harmony in front of the memorial for the Jewish survivors in Shanghai.
"In a time when no one was ready to take us China opened up and saved our lives and we escaped from the Holocaust. We are not going to forget about that," Matzdorff said.
(China Daily April 28, 2006)
