Category Archives: Memoirs

Jewish Refugees in Shanghai (1938 – 1947)

The Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum unveiled a memorial wall in 2014 listing the names of 13,732 Jews who found a haven in the Chinese city during World War II.

Sinosphere, the Blog of The New York Times, wrote on the dedication ceremony: “In the 1930s and 40s, thousands of Jews escaping Nazi Germany arrived in Shanghai, a place they could enter without a visa. After the Évian Conference of 1938, when the major powers shut their doors to nearly all Jewish immigrants, the city remained one of the few available places of refuge. By the beginning of World War II, more European Jews had fled to Shanghai than any other city in the world. The memorial consists of a 111-foot-long copper wall etched with the names and featuring a sculpture of six allegorical figures representing faith, suffering, love, determination, light and hope, designed by the Chinese artist He Ning. Chen Jian, the museum’s director, said the names on the memorial were compiled with the help of former Jewish refugees in Shanghai, as well as Chinese and foreign scholars, according to China Daily. Many of the names were taken from a list found in the German book ‘Exil Shanghai: 1938-1947,’ co-authored by Sonja Mühlberger, 75, who was herself born in Shanghai to refugee parents in the 1930s and has been involved in the memorial project.

The list in her book was first compiled during the war by three teenage Jewish girls hired by Japanese military officers to undertake an informal census. Most of the Jewish population then was relegated by the Japanese to an overcrowded district called Hongkou, a ‘designated area for stateless refugees.’ In a museum press release, Ms. Mühlberger comments, ‘My parents’ experiences in Shanghai were certainly not the easiest, but if they had not been exiled there, I wouldn’t even be alive today, let alone have the chance to tell this history.'”

Among these refugees, immortalized on the “Wall of Names”, we discover Rosa Koppelmann from Czernowitz, the addressee of the “Cry of Desperation from Siberia via Shanghai to Czernowitz”. Seven further names, potentially all related to Rosa, were listed under the same address in Shanghai, i. e. Zang Yang Lu Rd., former Ward Rd.:

HERBERT KOPPELKOWSKI • RUTH KOPPELKOWSKI • JULIUSZ KOPPELMAN • RICHARD KOPPELMANN • MAX KOPPLOWITZ • SIMON KOPSKI • MAX KOPSTEIN

“Jewish Life in Radautz Before, During and After the Holocaust” Cont’d!

ADDITIONAL LINKS

Book of the Month, 10/2017: Lost Childhood • Verlorene Kindheit • Copilărie pierdută
Ehpes Blog, 07/2017: Jewish Life in Radautz Before, During and After the Holocaust
Suceava News, 24-Jun-2018: Întâlnire cu o supraviețuitoare a Holocaustului

Remembering Emmanuel Landau, MD, PhD

Dr. Emmanuel Landau (Courtesy by Rob Gartenberg)

Rob Gartenberg: I will always remember my mother’s cousin Manny (as he called himself after settling in the USA) as a witty man with a generous spirit, a sparkle in his eye and a razor-sharp intellect. We always knew him as Mani, for he was born Manuel Leonid Landau, the initials of his name derived from those of his grandfather, Leibish Mendel Landau, a well-respected rabbi. Leibish’s wife, Ettl Schächte, once said of Manny as a boy:  “Das Kind hat kein Ernst in sich, er will nur spielen!” (The child has no earnestness, he just wants to play). Well, later in life he certainly did develop his serious side, becoming a widely respected professor and medical researcher. But it’s true, he never lost his appetite for laughter. His maternal grandfather was Josef Ohrenstein, who founded and ran the Jewish Hospital in Czernowitz.

Dr. Josef Ohrenstein (Courtesy by Rob Gartenberg)

After being interned in Transnistria, Manny, his parents and his maternal grandfather managed to get onto one of the last boats to Palestine, where people started calling him Emmanuel. This name found its way onto many personal documents, so, to avoid confusion he changed his name to Emmanuel Manuel and dropped the Leonid. His father, Jakob Landau was an eye doctor, his mother, Ida Ohrenstein, worked for a well-known publishing company. Sadly, Manny was not an eager correspondent, so our intermittent meetings were my only opportunity to benefit from his very extensive knowledge and wisdom. I never had a boring conversation with him and wish we’d lived closer together and that our paths had crossed more often. That, in itself, is a tribute to his character: he was someone you wanted to spend time with. My mother grew up with him in Czernowitz, where he lived in Herrengasse (she lived in Taboragasse), close to the old synagogue. Mani was like a younger brother to her and life was good until the Red Army marched in and many Jews had to flee (she among them, though they were later reunited in Palestine). Mani also had an eccentric side to him, accompanying every dinner with a lemon, cut into seven equal pieces, which he then ate. I cannot recall the significance of this, but it gives a small insight into his nature, showing that he liked to give life meaning. He married twice, having two children of whom he was very proud with his second wife, and his last decades were spent living with a third companion, first in New York, then in Atlanta. He is – and will remain – sorely missed by his family.

Click here for the obituary published by the Mount Sinai Alumni Relations Team!

Happy Birthday, Edgar Hilsenrath!


goodreads: Edgar Hilsenrath (born [April 2] 1926) is a German-Jewish writer living in Berlin. His main works are Night, The Nazi and the Barber, and The Story of the Last Thought.

Hilsenrath was born in Leipzig. In 1938 his mother escaped with her two children to Siret (Sereth), in Romanian Bukovina, where they enjoyed a respite from persecution. At the time that he should have received an entrance card to higher education, he and his mother were interned in the ghetto of Cernăuţi (Czernowitz).

He began to write about the Holocaust after his liberation when he moved to Paris. Hilsenrath also lived in Palestine, Israel, and New York.

According to Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, Simon Wiesenthal Center, “Hilsenrath calls things by their proper names and portrays life first and foremost as physical existence, of whose details the reader is constantly made aware: birth, nursing, feeding, sex, and excretion accompanied by feelings of pleasure and pain. The rhetoric of politicians and political theory are shown to be the schemes of beings ultimately dependent on these bodily processes and subject to physical desires. Hilsenrath’s very approach is a protest against disrespect toward the mortal body, against the tyranny of the mind over matter.”

The Osias “Shike” Stenzler Radautz Booklet

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“The Osias ‘Shike’ Stenzler Radautz Booklet” is a unique document compiled by Osias Stenzler over about three decades until his death in the year 2008 at the age of 99 years. His memory, unlike his eyesight, never faded, even at an advanced age. After the loss of vision, Osias’ sons Daniel and Bondy kept his records from dictation and so we have the rare opportunity to discover a real treasure chest making alive the Jewish life in post WW2 Radautz. The booklet is headlined “Occupations and Professions Practiced by the Jewish Population of Radautz”, but beyond the long list of names it contains authentic notes and remarks on the Radautz Jewish community.

osias-stenzler-82-638Link: http://bondysidi.blogspot.de/

Happy Days of Youth

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Czernowitz – In a garden.

Happy days of youth. Unusual “arrangement” and setting – Edy Wagner, head of the Balalaika orchestra, who died too young, top left, my husband’s mother Alma Wagner in the middle, on the right her sister Ruzia Wagner with her famous pigtails, the rest are friends. Both Alma and Ruzia, were very gifted, played the guitar and the balalaika, accompanying themselves to a multitude of Yddish songs. Alma had a beautiful voice and had had some lessons with Joseph Schmidt when he was still a cantor. Alma had a great repertoire and sang and played often for her friends. She passed on her singing gift to our daughter Nadine.

Gabriele