Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum signs a memorandum of cooperation with Florida Holocaust Museum on May 17. photo: Lu Ting/GT
Ahead of International Museum Day, the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum is holding an international meeting on Wednesday to tell the stories of Holocaust survivors in Shanghai and how unique bonds have brought the offspring of the group around the world together.
The meeting brought researchers from major Jewish museums, institutions, Jewish societies, scholars and former Jewish refugees and their offspring to help the study and preservation of the history of Jewish refugees in Shanghai.
From 1938 to 1941, around 20,000 Jews from Europe fled to Shanghai to escape Nazi persecution. The Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, established in 2007 based on this history, is the only memorial institution in China that reflects the life experience of Jewish refugees during World War II.
In 2020, the Museum was expanded to include nearly 1,000 pieces (sets) of precious artifacts, as well as stories of more than 160 refugees and their families, presenting to audiences from the world the history of Jewish refugees living side by side with local Chinese residents and overcoming difficulties together in the 1930s and 1940s.
Chen Jian, director of Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum told the Global Times on Wednesday that it is hoped that the special event would further help preserve and spread the this special history with the joint effort of the international community.
During the event Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum signed a memorandum of cooperation with Florida Holocaust Museum to work together on strengthening cooperation in exhibitions and research.
"We hope to make the story more accurate and reach a wider audience by expanding international cooperation," Chen said.
Paul Martin founding director of Florida Holocaust Museum said that Jewish Refugees in Shanghai is a part of their permanent exhibit and he looked forward to telling it to a wider audience through the people to people exchange with the deepened cooperation.
Martin said the two museums will be exploring the curation of a temporary exhibition from the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum to be displayed at the Florida Holocaust Museum and perhaps toured across the US.
Chen said that for the next stage, efforts will be made to find and reconnect descendants and relatives of those Jewish Refugees so that their story has a new voice.
"We hope to find the descendants of those Jewish refugees, to tell this story to the world and expand China's friend circle internationally," Chen said.
Jerry Imas, a descent of Shanghai Jewish Refugees who attended the event told the Global Times on Wednesday that he is eager to work with the museum to found the descent of Shanghai Jewish Refugees.
His mother was born in Shanghai as the daughter of a Jewish Refugee who fled to Shanghai during the WWII.
"I hope that I can pass on the story of mutual help between China and Jews from my mother, and then I will try my best to pass it on to my next generation, or another descendant of Jewish refugees," Imas said.
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