All language subtitles for Exile Shanghai 2

This is a wedding photograph of my first
wedding taken in Shanghai.

The synagogue is directly in front of
this picture.

I've just exited from the car. And as
you can see, there's a whole bunch of

Chinese kids surrounding the bride that
was taken on the street right there on

Route Vallon in Shanghai.

Thank you.

My parents were little children during
the revolution.

They were living in Siberia, and their
parents in turn brought them across the

Trans-Siberian Railroad to Harbin.

My mother traveled with a deaf-mute
mother. She had lost her father during

the pogroms in Siberia.

And my dad came with full entourage, all
the family, everybody intact, everybody

in place.

And when they arrived in Harbin, much to
their amazement, they found that There

was no place to live, no running water.
I should say no running hot water.

My grandpa was an engineer, and so he
got real busy trying to get things

together for the family to be able to
live comfortably.

There were five kids involved.

And he was extremely entrepreneurial,
and he decided that first things first,

since there was no hot water, he opened
the bathhouses.

The bathhouse was on Diganalna Ulica in
Harbin.

And I think it was called Ginsburg's
Baths. I'm pretty sure it was called

Ginsburg's Baths. And he became very
well known because that was the only

bathing facility that was available to
all these people. And people just kept

coming and coming and coming. And Harbin
was a very small spot. It was overrun

with white Russians escaping during the
revolution in no time at all.

And pretty soon he was very comfortable.
He was making a lot of money and things

were looking up and he decided to go
back to engineering.

My dad, who was a real playboy, he was
engaged 13 times, believe it or not,

drove the first automobile ever in
Harbin and raised humming pigeons.

And my grandfather got fed up with that
very rapidly and sent him to Germany to

an engineering school.

as well as his older brother.

Actually, the reason why we went to
Shanghai is my grandfather felt that he

needed an expansion, a business
expansion, so he sent his sons to

Shanghai. My mother tells a fantastic
story about the two brothers going off

to Shanghai, and my father was
supposedly supposed to establish a

business and an income and then send for
her, and he didn't. And she waited and

waited, and he didn't, and she was stuck
with me.

And my grandmother, who was deaf-mute,
and she finally got on the boat, came to

Shanghai, arrived on the dock, and
started to look for him. She thought

Shanghai was like Harbin. All she'd have
to do is mention his name, and that

would take care of things. Well,
interestingly enough, it did take care

of things, strangely enough.

But not until she found out that the man
who had picked her up at the dock with

her mother and her one-year-old child
was running a whorehouse.

And he brought her to this whorehouse
with the intent of using her as one of

the girls.

But she was too smart. She walked in,
saw what the story was, and apparently

decided at her young age that...

They wouldn't use my grandmother and
they certainly wouldn't use me. So she

got out of the bathroom window and took
off and found my father and straightened

things out in no time at all.

She loves telling the story, by the way.
My mother, if you ever get to meet her,

is absolutely beautiful.

Beautiful woman.

She was such a knockout that it was a
continual thing for me to have to put up

with that guys would come later on to
pick me up to go to a movie or to a

dance or whatever.

They'd take one look at her and say, my
God, if I knew that your mother looked

like that, who'd take you out?

So it was fun growing up with that kind
of a problem. And this went on forever,

even today. Believe it or not, she's
still gorgeous.

Anyway, life in Shanghai for us was
unbelievable.

We had servants. We had three in help.

I went to a private school.

I was tutored and spoke and do still
speak, read and write in four out of the

five languages that I was taught in.

Young ladies at that time had to play
piano, speak French and know how to

enter a room, exit a room and sit down
in a chair, as my mother would say, not

like a bag of potatoes.

Because if you did it as a bag of
potatoes, you were immediately sent out

of the room.

And we're told that you had to do it all
over again, and you had to keep doing it

all over again until you got it
straight.

Ballet, of course, was part of it. So
was piano lessons, and all these things

were terribly important at that time.

It's strange for me now, looking back
and seeing things as an adult, not as a

kid.

how horrible it was really for the
Chinese people who were very suppressed.

Here we were living in their country, in
the lap of luxury, where they had either

everything and a small percentage of the
Chinese people, or nothing at all, who

basically waited on us hand and foot,
who took care of us, and this is what

colonization was all about.

I don't know whether you know the
history of Shanghai, but if you would

take a certain number of streets, That
would be French. Another certain number

of streets was German.

Another one was American, and so forth
and so on. English, of course, too.

And those streets were controlled by the
country that was in charge of them.

Both their laws were respected, their
languages were respected, and that's

what was utilized as a lifestyle. So it
was kind of interesting, because even so

that we lived in one city, we learned to
speak Russian, English, French, German,

and Chinese.

Almost at birth. I mean, it was an
automatic thing.

And today it's kind of interesting when
people say, my God, you speak five

languages and you can read and write in
them.

Little do they know that you didn't have
to go to school to learn any of them. I

mean, it was like it was there.

It was survival.

In the beginning of Hitler's regime, we
had a tremendous influx.

of European Jewry that came to Shanghai,
and they poor guys really had a very

hard time.

Soup kitchens were opened up by the
Russian Jews, which we were.

The Chabad houses were opened up to feed
the needy.

They had schools that were set up as
dormitories for families.

And it was a time that was very
difficult. It was very difficult. It was

hard for the Russian Jews to continue to
live in the style that we had been

living and to see the misery that was
going on with our own people.

It didn't take long.

Most of them, or I should say the ones
that I came into contact with, were very

highly educated, were very bright
people, and it took no time for them to

really become a part of the community
and to set up businesses and homes and

take care of their families and get
along and get ahead very fast in life.

But then, of course, came the Japanese
occupation, and that curtailed

everything for them because they were
ghettoized and put across the Garden

Bridge on the other side of Shanghai.

And life became extremely miserable,
very, very miserable for these people.

On the other hand, we were free
completely and had no limitations placed

upon us.

We were free to come and go. We were
free to pursue business.

We were free to live.

really what was an unbelievable life. I
mean, I remember as a kid growing up and

my parents having a membership at the
French club where they had spring dance

floors and indoor and outdoor swimming
pools and tennis courts and you name it.

None of this was ever curtailed.

The hotels were magnificent in Shanghai.
The hotel that's on the Bund and Nanking

Road, which is now called the Peace
Hotel.

If you would have seen that hotel in the
days that I remember it, there is

nothing left. There is absolutely
nothing left.

The halls were bedecked with crystal
chandeliers from Vienna.

There was flocked bright red wallpaper
on all the rooms.

Every guest room had built-ins made out
of...

Beautiful, beautiful woods.

Everything was kept spotlessly clean.

I remember so well the beautiful,
elegant women that would get out of

their cars and the doorman in full
costume with white gloves would open the

doors for them and they would do nothing
but live the decadent life.

They'd play Mahjong all afternoon long.
They'd dance the night away and all they

talked about was what dress.

what to wear.

You know, there was such a thing in
those days where the tailor lived in

your house just to keep the women
dressed.

All he did was sew clothes all day long
just for the women in the household.

On the other hand, the poverty was
unbelievable.

The beggars on the street were
horrendous. You would get up in the

morning and you would see a black van
that would drive up and down the streets

collecting the dead little girls that
were thrown out in the garbage can by

the Chinese.

I can't really fathom what the heck was
going on with my brains, why I never saw

any of it that way then, that I see
today.

It's just absolutely amazing.

But I was a little kid, and all I had to
worry about was how to get to school,

and how to go to a birthday party, and
how to wear the right dress, and fight

my mother because of the ruffles. Those
ruffles just never ended.

You can't get one cat?

I didn't know.

I went to Collège Municipal Français.

They closed down the school because
there was a war going on in Saigon. At

that time, they took all the embassy
people and sent them out to Saigon, and

the rest of them, the consulate and
embassy, were shipped back to France.

And here I was, I was approximately 10
years old, speaking no English.

My parents sent me to Public and Thomas
Hambry School for Girls, which was a

private school, all in English.

They put me into a classroom where I had
the devil of a time because I didn't

understand what was being said to me.

So I struggled for a while there.

Then World War II started and they
closed down the British school.

And what happened to my school was it
now became a concentration camp for all

the allies that were living at that time
in Shanghai.

The American and the British were all
incarcerated.

in our school and the boys' school,
which was back-to-back with ours.

So that part of my education got
curtailed.

I was in my early teens, and the only
thing that was left to me was the Jewish

Seymour Road School.

That was a panic all unto itself.

I mean, I had just barely gotten on to
English.

Here we were in an English-speaking
school.

heavy into Hebrew, heavy into Jewish
education, and I was like nowhere.

We had a Hebrew teacher, and his name
was Mr. Ivry.

I don't know why his name was Mr. Ivry,
whether it was his name or whether it

had something to do with being a Jewish
class or something like that. I knew no

Jewish, no Hebrew, nothing, none of this
background whatsoever.

And I'm sitting in this class, and I'm
literally bored to death with the whole

thing. And I'm amusing myself as well as
my friends, my little students around

me, directly in front of me and back of
me by telling them this wonderful dream

that I've had that I'm going to grow up
and go to America and I'm going to

become a very, very famous movie star.

And for some reason I was doing this
great big black hat routine and this

very tight black dress routine and
everybody was just swallowing every bit

of the story that I was telling them.

And I did not realize that the class had
stopped dead still. There was no class

going on. And Mr.

Avery was standing at his desk with the
ruler in his hand just waiting for me to

stop this baloney.

And I did when I realized what was going
on. And the next thing I knew, he was

banging on his desk with his ruler and
saying, Gibbsburg, you're not going to

be a movie star. You're not going to
America.

You're going to be a fish market wife.

You're going to go see...

road bazaar very famous bazaar sell raw
fish and have five kids that's what

you're gonna do and he threw me out of
the class that was the end of my

experience

Hello,

how do you do?

How do you do?

Thank you.

Hey.

My education had come to a total halt.

World War II was in full blast, and here
I was in the midst of nothing going no

place. So my mother sent me to a school
to learn how to type.

I got a job.

and there I met a wonderful young man
who I later married.

He was from Vienna, and his life was
quite different, and his story was quite

different.

He was in concentration camp with his
brother.

He was let out of concentration camp at
a very, very early stage in his life,

age in his life.

And he was shipped with his mother and
his father to Shanghai. They were able

to get passage for three, but not for
four. I don't know what happened. But

somehow or another, the other brother
got left behind in concentration camp.

The mother and father and Willie
Wasserman, as so many others, came on

this boat to Shanghai.

of immigrants that were coming in really
on a daily basis.

The streets were crowded. All these
people coming in. Everybody had to

somehow or another help them out.

Soup kitchens were opened very rapidly.

The Chabad house, all the Jewish
institutions, the private homes.

People took people in.

It was unbelievable. It was like the
end.

of childhood, the end of a happy time
and the beginning of a disaster that was

incomprehensible.

There were terrible things happening on
the street for everyone to see.

Babies were being thrown out in garbage
cans, alive, not dead.

There were vans picking them up and
trying to house them, trying to find

somebody to care for them.

They were Chinese babies.

Then there were the immigrants that were
coming in that had no place to go.

The community in large took them in, did
the best that we could, but God, they

just kept coming and coming and coming.

And we just were at a loss.

The people that were coming in at that
time were poor and hungry and frightened

and traumatized and families torn apart.

Willie Wasserman wasn't the only one who
had left a brother behind.

Anyway, pretty soon they kind of became
a part of the community. They were all

bright. They were all educated.

They were all wonderful people.

And they established businesses, and
they started to get on their feet, and

it was no time at all when the Japanese
occupation took place, and boom, that

came to an end, totally to an end.

They took all of those immigrants and
stuck them across the Garden Bridge in

Hong Kong.

Hunky was the ghettoized place.

Then they took the British and the
American and they stuck them into our

schools. These were schools.

They were now concentration camps or
holding camps.

I want to bring something out that I
think is extremely important, and that

is that the Japanese, by and large, were
extremely considerate, even so that they

put them in camps. They didn't hurt
them. They didn't kill them. They didn't

do horrible things to them. They just
kept them in one place so they had a

control. so they knew where to put their
finger on them if they needed to.

Now the European Jewelry that came in,
which was housed in Honkyu across the

Garden Bridge, they were given passes.

If they were able to find work in the
city itself, they were given passes to

cross the bridge to come into the city
to do their work and then report in the

evening with their passes across the
Garden Bridge back home.

Goya was called the king of the Jews. He
was the little Japanese man that

literally had everybody at his mercy
because he either gave you a pass or he

didn't give you a pass.

And if you didn't have a pass, you
didn't have a job, which meant you

couldn't eat.

So he really had everybody at his mercy.

He was not the greatest guy in the
world. He didn't kill anybody, he didn't

shoot anybody, but he belittled them.

He was very eccentric, and he called
himself the king of the Jews because he

was literally in control of their lives.

On the flip side of the coin, we who
lived there before the immigration, who

were natives, so to speak, we weren't
touched. Nobody bothered us. We

continued in our lifestyle.

had our daily routine. We were still
permitted to live in the homes that we

lived in and work in the jobs that we
had to work in.

But things did change.

They didn't, and they did. On the
surface, they didn't. On the inside,

they did.

There were shortages all over the place.

Food became rationed. We had no eggs, no
chicken, no, God, oranges.

Trivial stuff. We certainly could
survive without these things.

On the other hand, people were in
concentration camps, and we had to

somehow or another get food to them.
Nobody knew how good or how bad the

situation was there.

This is my husband. His name is Bill
Wasserman. This photograph was taken in

Honkyu, in a little roof garden kind of
thing in front of the room that we

rented right after we got married.

I'm sorry.

The people that were in the Jewish
ghettos across the Garden Bridge

trafficked heavily into reselling stuff.

You won't believe what people can come
up with if they have to make a living.

They sold everything from youth clothing
to... There was a woman that was very

interesting that I knew very well, that
I got to know very well.

who used to turn neckties inside out
because they were worn on the front side

or were spotted, and resell them inside
out.

There were other people that opened

wonderful café houses on the other side
of the Garden Bridge, and now...

The white Russians, as we were called,
because we were stateless, were going

across the Garden Bridge to frequent
those restaurants, which were wonderful,

and they were so European, and it
brought in a whole different flavor into

our community that we were never exposed
to. Came the European language, the

German, especially the German, and the
wonderful cakes from Austrian bakers.

I mean, there was all kinds of things
going on. Our club started to shut down

because the Japanese were using it as a
facility for either office space for

them or holding cells or whatever.

And so the entertainment that we had, we
had to go across the Garden Bridge, and

there the crossover began, where you
began to meet people that came in from

abroad on a one-to-one basis.

As I mentioned previously, I met my
husband because I was working in a place

where he was working, and that's how I
got to meet him. A lot of kids started

traveling across the Garden Bridge and
getting to know the European youngsters

that were coming in from Europe.

Things were getting harder.

People were out of jobs. There was less
food available.

You were afraid to go on the street
because they were beggars. They were

lepers. They were elephant titus.

And they would run after you and would
threaten you to touch you, to pass the

disease on to you if you wouldn't give
them money.

They'd run after you and go, That means
you had to give them a tip of some sort.

It became very, very tough, but more
importantly, it also became very

depressing. People dealt in black
market.

three servants that lived in our house
for God knows how many years.

And the cook, who was called the boy,
would steal things, food stuff, from the

house. Butter was impossible to come by,
so you got out and you went on the black

market, and I don't remember how much,
but you paid a lot of money for a piece

of butter. He would steal the butter and
resell the butter and would substitute

butter. They got very clever at doing
all this kind of stuff.

So it's just that things changed so
drastically that the game of life was no

longer played by the same rules anymore.

I so often remember how different things
became.

We used to drive around in cars.

Now we were on bicycles.

Trams were no longer available.

Getting from point one to point two was
a major, major planning situation.

Money became totally devaluated.

I remember so well.

I had a carrying basket on the front of
my bike. If you filled that basket with

money, it wouldn't even buy you a loaf
of bread.

You had to have a suitcase tied to the
back of your bike, strapped with an old

belt. That much money, that volume of
money to buy a loaf of bread.

Go into Hongkiu was no big deal.

Now you had to cycle to it. And then
when you got there, you had to have

identification showing that you were not
an alien, that you were not locked up

running away from somewhere trying to
get to someplace else.

And all those people that had to be
lined up all the time showing passes. I

mean, we never had passes. I didn't know
what a pass was. We wouldn't even have

known how to obtain a pass.

And suddenly everybody had labels and
everybody had tags and armbands.

At night, you had to be home before
dark, and we had curfew all the time,

just this continual curfew.

The bombs started to fall, and we found
out in a hurry what curfew was all

about.

We had bombs falling primarily in
Hongkyu, which was horrible.

The Allied forces were bombing Hongkyu,
and they were hitting hospitals, and

they were hitting a ghetto that was
already so dismembered and so

impoverished. They were having such a
horrible time just surviving.

They were living whole families in one
little room, and they were bombing.

We later found out, of course, after the
war, the Japanese forces had armament

and ammunition in the hospitals because
they were hoping that that would prevent

them from being demolished.

There were deaths. There was disease.

I don't know. It was just time to go,
and that's what happened. Everybody that

could get out started to get out.

A lot got stuck behind simply because
they had no quotas.

You know, I still don't understand why
America never opened its doors.

Never. There was no way of getting out.

The Jews kept pouring in, and they
couldn't get anybody out. It took the

end of the war in 1945 until we started
to be able to get some people out of the

country. The communists started coming
into the Orient.

They would take a city at a time.

So it took all the way to 1950, or even
51, until they got to Shanghai.

And my parents were still there, and I
was in the States. I left in January of

49 to the States. I came with 100 U.S.
dollars.

I do all kinds of things with this 100
dollars because I was accustomed to the

fact that my father told me that 100
U.S. dollars kept us fed.

Clothes, three servants in the house,
French school, French club, a car,

and all the amenities, $100 a month.

So I came to the States.

Needless to say, I never bought out
America.

I bought a hi-fi set, so you see, even
in those days, priorities were

priorities.

I then found out I had no more money,
and that was the end of school and the

end of that dream.

That's a picture of me and we'll just go
quickly through this.

And Iza Rabinovich and some of my
childhood friends.

More of same, scattered all over the
world. He's in Russia. This one is in

Boston.

One little Chinese girlfriend, believe
it or not, out of all those pictures.

This is Henri Lafayette. So is this.

This is my mother in front of King
Albert Apartments. Dad and I.

Just family pictures.

Me as a baby.

More family pictures.

This is at the end of the war when the
GIs came over and liberated China.

Guess what happened? We all fell in love
with the old Yankee Doodles.

Great shot.

This is an extremely important
photograph, I think.

It actually depicts my 16th birthday
taken in the dining room of my home, and

a lot of these people have really become
quite prominent citizens.

This is Toccoa. His name used to be
George Tukashinsky.

Then when he became the ambassador of
the United Nations from Israel, his name

was changed to Tekoa.

A lot of the kids are dead.

A lot of them are in the United States.
He used to be the leader of Bataar. His

name is Jack Lieberman, which was very
Zionist-oriented, very Bataar-oriented,

and very Jewish, even so that... I don't
think we really knew what it was all

about. We kind of thought we knew what
it was all about. Whatever it was, it

was something that we had made up.

And here is my gorgeous and elegant
mother, always posing, always beautiful.

And the split started.

And a lot of them went to the United
States. A lot of them went to Israel.

And we lost a lot of people through
different horrible things that were

happening. The exoduses that never
happened. The dreams that never

occurred. The running away, the four
winds of the world.

My mother's family came from Russia,
Odessa, and via Alexandria and

Singapore, and met up with my father's
family, who came from Austria

originally, Vienna, and went to
Constantinople, as Istanbul was then

known. And they met, as I said, in 1904
in Shanghai.

My mother was 14 years old.

And my father was 20, and he was already
a very successful young man.

And there were seven men infatuated in
love with my mother, and she got engaged

to all of them, taking no chances.

And her mother said to her, marry the
cripple. My father had a club foot. She

said, marry the cripple, he'll be the
kindest.

So she did what her mother told her, and
she married my father, and that was in

1910, when he was 26 and she was 19.

And then they, she had two sisters,
very, very attractive sisters,

who both were singers, and they felt
that they wanted to marry, my

mother felt she wanted to marry her
sisters off into the same family.

And my father had an older bachelor
brother.

And my mother's younger sister married
Uncle Ruben. And my

mother's middle sister, after a number
of years, married my father's nephew.

My father was the first independent
cotton broker in Shanghai.

He was so successful that firms like
Anderson Clayton from America came out

and copied his techniques.

And this all lasted very, very nicely
until the late 20s. I don't know how

affected my father was by the crash, but
anyway, he died at 45 in 1929.

He left us a reasonably good estate. We
were really considerably well off.

And we managed to go from 1929 to 1945

just eating up assets. We ate up.

First of all, the stock and the cash in
the bank, and then finally

jewelry and ivory collections piece by
piece, simply so that we

wouldn't have to collaborate with the
Japanese during the war.

In 1918, my parents moved into an
apartment, a penthouse, on

26th Abund.

which was the Yangtze Insurance
Building.

And at that time, the first couple of
decades of the century, all the smart

apartments, all the smart living,
elegant living, was on top of penthouses

in the international settlement downtown
in Shanghai.

And we lived there in this rather large
apartment, eight to ten rooms, and

there were twelve servants.

You had a number one boy, a number two
boy, a number three boy, a number one

coolie, a number two coolie, a number
three coolie, ama for the children, ama

for the, as a sort of maid for the
mother, lots of servants.

The majority liked working in foreign
homes because working in Chinese homes

was much tougher.

First of all, my grandmother, who was
kosher, tried to be kosher, was a

stickler for everything had to be fresh.
So chickens were always killed at home.

Turkeys were brought home and they were
fed brandy. So my grandmother had a

theory that if you fed the turkey
brandy, it would relax the muscles and

they wouldn't go into rigor mortis when
the turkey was killed. I mean, all this

calculation for a turkey. And then this
poor turkey used to, I would go into the

kitchen with my bad luck to walk into
the kitchen and there's a drunken turkey

walking around staggering from brandy.

Anyway, the cook used to go regularly,
and my grandmother was very petulant,

very spoiled old woman, and she didn't
like anything that was cooked because

she always thought she could do it
better, but she was no longer able to do

it. And once there was a flood, and the
cook went to buy food for my

grandmother, and he got pneumonia, and
he died. So this was the end of our 40

-year service of our cook, and we loved
him very much. He was Dasu, which

means... Master chef, big, big cook.

We had horses, and the horses ran in
what was called the champion

sweepstakes. And my father bought a
ticket for the sweepstakes for the

servants. It was when I was born, as a
matter of fact.

and he bought this ticket in honor of
the fact that I was born.

And lo and behold, the horse came in
first, and the servants won $100,000,

which they, in proper Chinese fashion,
went to my father and said, it is your

ticket. And my father said, no, this is
your ticket.

Some of them quit, some of them stayed
on, some of them invested badly and

worked forever.

But from that...

situation. I was known as the dondi
nitsu, which is the money child.

And it ruined my life because my ama
used to say to me, you will never be

poor because you are the dondi nitsu. So
I thought, well, I don't have to turn a

finger. I'm never going to be poor
because I'm the dondi nitsu. Of course,

I found out life doesn't work that way.

The most important people were the
Taipans, what we call in this country

tycoons. These people were businessmen
with great acumen, with great power.

They knew how to coalesce not only
important businesses and

important contacts, but also socially,
how to make these things work, how to

manipulate circumstances and politics
even.

Then it went from the Taipans or the
tycoons to the diplomats. And then after

the diplomats, it went to professionals.

doctors, lawyers, people like that. All
of these people had a remarkably good

life. I mean, it was a privileged life.
It was a life of great luxury.

People who would come out, for instance,
to work for the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank,

a young clerk who had nothing in England
would suddenly find himself the owner of

horses and a member of the very, very
prestigious country club. You could not

belong to the country club unless you
were a British subject.

My father was a founder member of nearly
every club in Shanghai was not able to

belong to the country club because
that's where they drew the line. Their

papers, whether they were passports or
not, I don't know, but their papers were

stamped Yudin.

And this was something that was not...

very pleasant to have to carry with you
because, after all, you wanted to belong

to a country, not to a race or a
religion, and you didn't want to be

identified whether you liked it or not.

You wanted a choice.

My father, during the First World War,
made large contributions to the Allied

Red Cross, and he was hoping that the
British would give him nationality.

And instead they wrote him very nice
thank you notes. And they were such

diplomats. They were wonderful and
charming and still didn't let him become

a member of the country club and did not
give him citizenship. The French, on the

other hand, my father loaned them 6
million francs, I think at 2% interest.

And he gave the Allied Red Cross.

100,000 pounds, which in 1914 was a huge
amount of money. The French, however,

reacted with gratitude, and they gave
him French citizenship.

So I was born a French citizen in 1923,
and therefore my name is Georges.

I had to study French because at home we
spoke English.

So my private lessons were all in French
and also because my mother loved Latin,

I went to the Casa d'Italia where I
studied Italian for four years.

I'd like to tell you something about the
Jewish community of Shanghai and how

they impinged on life in China and how
they fitted in.

to both the social and the economic
structure.

In the 19th century, Sephardic Jews from
India came to

China, and they made a great deal of
money, great fortunes were made

in dealing with opium, which the British
had legalized with the Treaty of Nanking

in 1842.

Many of these families became rich as
creases.

Among them, the most prominent of them
being the Sassoon family, the E.D.

Sassoon firm.

And working for the Sassoons was a man
by the name of Hardoon.

And I'm not sure whether the Kaduris
worked for the Hardoons also, but Kaduri

became extremely successful also in his
name. He became Sir Eli Kaduri.

And his sons became lords. They were
very prominent in Hong Kong.

Both of them died recently.

The Sassoon and Hardoon and Ezra's and
Joseph's were

great Sephardic Jewish families who were
very, very philanthropic. They did a

lot of great work.

And the reason I'm telling you this is
because...

when the time came that the Russian Jews
arrived in China, and then later on in

1938, the German and Austrian and Polish
refugees came to China, these people

were largely responsible for the
committees which gave them aid and gave

them help and put them on their feet.

And following the arrival of the
Sephardic Jews were the

Ashkenazi Jews, the Jews who came
from... Eastern Europe and places like

that. And they also, some of them were
extremely successful. They were

entrepreneurs, like my father was one.
And Michel Spielman was a man who was

the manager of the Russian bank.

In 1904, and my father loaned him $5,000
to start a business called the ISS.

And the ISS was the International Saving
Society. And he was in real estate. And

this man made a fortune. And he was a
Dutch Jew. And also part of the

committee that welcomed the European
Jews when they came and helped them

financially in different organizations.

To get back to what the contribution of
the German and Austrian and Polish Jews

was when they came in 1938, there was
something very different culturally that

they contributed.

There was, for the first time, very,
very elegant fur shops, very elegant hat

shops. I remember the furs were, no,
René, René furs. And they

put... very dramatic ads in the
newspapers.

One line, you know, squiggled, that
looked like a paintbrush, and that was a

whole fur cape.

And it was really quite dynamic, because
Shanghai, they were very conservative

people. They'd always been a big city
for couturier, for

custom-made clothes, and for wealthy
women.

The wonderful salon that was run by this
man, Evrin Lushina, and

his friend Jelinek, they had established
originally in Munich their

tailoring business, and they were
reputed to be the first people who ever

put Marlene Dietrich in slacks.

She went to them, Lillian Harvey went to
them, Zara Leander went to them, and

they had huge blown-up pictures of all
of these queens of the European film.

And, as I said, Leshina was a very
excitable, very hurried little man,

and everything was, you know, had to be
done yesterday.

And Jelinek used to stand there very
reposed, very refined, very

agonized, and he had...

carefully plucked eyebrows and penciled
in. And he always wore a cap and under

the cap were three or four strands of
orange dyed hair and a huge scarf that

he threw around him and around him and
around him. You never knew where that

scarf was going to end. And I don't
remember him ever saying one word, not

one word, but he must have been part of
the genius of that team because they

were so very good. And in 1945,

They wanted to mount what was then the
new look by Christian Dior. So they

decided that they were going to have the
first big fashion show after the war in

the Metropole Hotel with 500 guests to
watch this new fashion show.

And they did faithfully copy the Dior
styles with the...

very soft shoulders and flounce, a very
feminine look. And they had all the top

models in Shanghai. In fact, one of the
models is the girl that I'm in the

picture with, with Lorenzo Lowe, who was
the son of the Chinese minister

to Denmark.

And these girls all model these
beautiful, wonderful fashion. One of the

other models was my friend Larissa. And
Larissa was...

If there'd been a camera, she would have
been in love with it. And she used to

drag very slowly and pose and hold on to
a pillar.

And the other models were going fast,
like on the runway.

And Larissa would take all her time. She
wasn't the most beautiful of the models,

but she was the most intense.

And Lashini would stand there pulling
his hair. What is she doing? She's

ruining it! And Jelinek would stand off
on one corner thinking that he looked

every bit like Marlene Dietrich and
never moved a muscle.

And then Larissa would take her whole
time, and the other models, when she

came back, would say, what's the matter
with you? What's the matter?

She would say, it doesn't matter.

And so they'd go out again, and then
she, when it was her turn, she would

flirt with the customers and show them
the fabric and look at this, because she

wanted to be on stage. She just wanted
to be center stage.

And the show was a huge success.

My brother's name was Walter and my
brother died. He phoned me and he said,

I want you to come and design for me. So
I didn't tell him I wasn't Walter Spund.

I just went and I did designs for him.

He had beautiful, beautiful things, and
his shop was called Old Bond Street, and

it was in the Palace Hotel, which was
directly opposite the Cathay Hotel.

Then there was a woman who did hats, and
her hats were glorious, and her name was

Desiree. And she was a wonderful model
for her hats because she was a very

pretty woman.

There were a lot of entrepreneurs among
these people who came out. Some of them

made very elegant shops.

for accessories and bags and things like
that.

From a life of great freedom and
openness and spiritedness, high

spiritedness, the marching in of the
Japanese on December 8th, 1941

changed the entire picture and the
entire character of Shanghai.

Shanghai became sort of a city.

that was not raped like Nanking because
the Japanese had a purpose for Shanghai.

They wanted to keep a city where they
could make transactions, where they

could have a certain amount of freedom
for themselves.

And what they did is in many cases, as
in our case, they went and they took the

first two floors of every building and
they kicked the people out. So you

were... virtually homeless unless
somebody took you in, and they filled

them with provisions and munitions. So
the rationale was if the Americans came

to bomb, they'd have to bomb through a
whole building of hostages to get to,

of tenants, to get to these provisions
and munitions.

And it was, I suppose, a very shrewd
thing for them to do. But we found

ourselves thrown out of our home because
for the sake of economy, we moved.

From our French concession, we had an
apartment that was the whole floor of

the building, and then to economize, we
took our aunt's apartment on the second

floor, which she had vacated by going to
America, and then they kicked us out

from the second floor. The change was
gradual and became increasingly

difficult.

Proclamations came out. At first it
didn't seem so bad, but one proclamation

followed another.

And then you had not only restrictions,
movement restrictions, but you had

economic problems.

Dealing in U.S. dollars was illegal, but
nobody trusted the Chinese Central

Reserve Bank currency, which was
inflating from the minute it was

produced. So my brother would...

sell something and get some gold
dollars, and then he would convert it to

CRB, Central Reserve Bank notes, and
he'd come with a newspaper package like

this, the size of two or three feet,
bundled up, you know, it looked like it

might have a corpse in it, and that
would be lunch.

He'd say, let's go have lunch, because
that's what it took. It was millions,

you spent millions.

A taxi cab ride was five million CRB.

And then afterwards, under pressure from
the Germans, the Nazis, the Japanese

forced the German refugees to live over
the Garden Bridge in Hong Kong,

in an area that was really very
unattractive, that had originally been

the American concessions. When the
Americans saw what a rotten deal they

got, they joined forces with the British
and became the international settlement.

So they abandoned.

Hong-Kyu became also part of the
international settlement.

Nobody particularly wanted to be there.

Back to the German and Austrians, they
really had a very hard time because they

were then forced to go and live in a
certain constricted area in Hong-Kyu.

They had to have passes, and they were
allowed to come into the city for

several hours a day to conduct business,
and then they had to go back to the

ghetto, which is what it was.

The ideal thing is if you had German and
Austrian and Polish friends, because one

of the Polish young men married one of
my cousins.

So they always tried to come out and we
would see them in the city. We would see

them in the French concession, which is
where we lived.

But nobody wanted to go to the ghettos.
And I'm not sure that you could. I don't

know about that.

This is my parents' wedding photograph
taken at the Astor House in Shanghai in

1910. And in the photograph is my mother
and her mother

and her sister, Bessie, her second
sister.

And the other sister, Lisa, was in
Singapore

still with my grandfather, so they were
not at the wedding.

This is my mother's sister, Lisa, who
sang under the professional name of Lisa

Juravel. Juravel was my mother and her
sister's maiden name.

Actually, it sounds very French,
Juravel, but it was a Russian name which

is pronounced Juravel in Russian, which
means a crane.

And this is a picture of her in the
early 20s, maybe 1925, dressed up for

the evening.

This is another shot of Lisa, also
dressed up for the evening, and she was

very much a clothes horse. My mother had
a great deal of jewelry, but Lisa had a

great deal of designer clothes.

This is a photograph of Lisa as
Charlotte in Werther, Massenet's opera

Werther, based on the play by Goethe.

This is the house that Uncle Ruben and
Auntie Lisa built in 1923.

This was called the Villa Mona Lisa, and
this was the exterior of the house.

This was part of the salon.

This is the card room in the Villa Mona
Lisa, and this is where the kids had

their meals.

We did not have our meals with the
adults.

And what is a lady without her boudoir?
This is Lisa's boudoir in the Villa Mona

Lisa.

And this is her bedroom.

This is...

A picture of Lisa at the Circle Sportif
where she gave a concert for the

Soviet charity, you know, for St.
Titian's Orphanage

charity.

And she is here with the Soviet Consul
General and his wife, and also the Cuban

Minister and his wife, and with her
second husband, who was the Count Elzea

de Saint-Bran Pont-de-Vez, and he was
also the sub-director of the Banque de l

'Indochine.

Park Hotel was a wonderful, wonderful
meeting place for everybody.

But it was a place where a lot of gays
used to go. The third floor bar was the

cruising bar.

And the 14th floor, which was the
rollback ceiling, was the dancing, where

you went with girlfriends to dance. And
it was a marvelous place.

You know, almost every night in Shanghai
was unique because you never knew where

it was going to lead you.

And you never knew what kind of
adventure you were going to have. And

you never knew you could start out at an
ambassador or a consul general's party

and end up in the Honolulu bar on Avenue
Jacques.

So you could make friends with the
Russian taxi dancers or Barbie girls, as

they're called here in this country.

They were wonderful.

You know, you sit around on an empty
night and talk to them, and they all had

American accents. They were influenced
by movies.

were the absolutely moving force for
entertainment in China.

The Chinese loved movies. If you went to
a Laurel and Hardy movie, you had to

stand in lines to get in.

And every theater, major theater, showed
certain different film companies. The

Nanking Theater on Avenue Edward VII
showed MGM films.

The Grand Theater showed...

What did they show? They began by
showing Warner Brothers films, and then,

I don't know, maybe 20th Century Fox
they went to.

was strictly Warner Brothers. And this
was where I saw all of Bette Davis's

movies.

Movies were enormously important, and
movie people who came to Shanghai were

lionized. People loved to see them. But
a funny thing about Shanghai society,

they always thought they were more
important than the entertainers.

And the British were like, but after
all, my dear fellow, he's only an

entertainer.

was a place called The Little Club,
which was near the Grand Theater on

Bubbling Road.

That was extremely popular, and I think
it had a Filipino orchestra.

Most of the orchestras were white
Russians, sometimes under American band

leaders. Now, there was one at the
Paramount Nightclub. Paramount Nightclub

was in an area of Shanghai called St.
George's, and the Paramount Nightclub

was one of the first deco.

buildings very very there was a lot of
deco building in fact most of shanghai

architecture in the 30s and 40s was
based on deco and it had colored lights

and from my bedroom we could see my
mother used to go to the paramount

dancing and we could see the lights When
the lights turned off, the colored

lights and the panels of light, it was
panels like stained glass.

And when those lights went out, you knew
that it was over. And the orchestra

leader's name was Whitey Smith.

And Whitey Smith would sign off. His
sign-off tune was Good Night,

Sweetheart. So we knew Good Night,
Sweetheart meant Mother was coming home

very soon.

Gay life before the war was all on
cachette. Of course, we didn't call it

gay in those days because we didn't know
what gay meant, but all the other

synonyms for gay are just as repulsive,
so it doesn't matter what you called it.

You never knew that the next day might
not be the last. We always lived under

the fear that the Americans would bomb
the city because we were neutral.

So the people who were not neutral were
in camp, and the Americans knew the

locations of the camp, and we knew they
wouldn't bomb the camps. To get the

Japanese, they'd have to bomb the city.
So we thought we were going to be the

targets. And that created a very
devil-may-care attitude from young

people because we wanted to have fun,
and we wanted to have love, and we

wanted to have everything that we could
while we could. And these were from the

years of 1942 to 1945.

And, of course, the end of the war was
so glorious with the incoming troops and

the freedom and the liberation.

Thank you very much.

Well, I came to Shanghai, I think I was
17.

My brother and I had left Germany on a
kindertansport in

the early part of 1939.

My father and my mother were not able to
follow it at that particular time

because my father was still engaged in
the process of turning

over his business to Aryan.

successors and the Gestapo didn't allow
him to leave the country at that time.

He had been taking, of course, too long
to make that decision, but since

he was deeply rooted in German life and
had

spent four and a half years in the First
World War and

had been

He had the erroneous impression that
under those circumstances, nothing would

befall him and his family, which, of
course, turned out to be wrong.

In any event, we left for London, and
then the war broke out

in September 1939.

Hitler invaded Poland, and there we
were.

We were cut off from my parents.

really didn't have any idea whether we
would ever see them again.

And by almost a miracle, they were able
to acquire

probably a fake visa to one of those
small Central American republics.

And as late as the summer of 1940,
actually, I

left Germany via Trans-Siberian Railway.

In a rather amusing way, in a way, they
were able to use their last resources to

purchase a first class ticket on the
train, but in their pocket was five

marks each, and that was all they had as
they left Germany.

I think a kindly German businessman on
the train bought them a postage stamp so

that they could write to us to tell us
that they had escaped.

And the first class ticket on the
railway, meant first-class dining car

and first-class treatment.

And here they were, living for a few
more days in this

strange luxury, only to arrive at their
destination

penniless. In fact, my father caught on
the Trans-Siberian

train a dysentery.

And when he arrived in Manchuria, he was
near death.

And I think it was some compassionate
Russian physician who saw him

in his hotel and somehow got him back on
his feet.

So in looking back, I think my parents'
story about the Trans-Siberian trip was

less the...

excitement of seeing a whole continent
roll by for several days, but the sense

of unbelievable relief and relief at
having performed a near miracle of

escaping and being on the way to
freedom.

But he finally made it to Japan, to
Kobe.

And it's one of the transit points,
Japanese, of

course.

believing that they had their final goal
in mind. But of course, that was really

their last point.

And at that particular moment, they
persuaded the Japanese authorities to

actually grant my brother and me a visa
to join them temporarily in Japan.

And my brother and I, I was then 17 and
he was 14,

left on a little Japanese ship for for
Kobe.

It took us eight or ten weeks to get
around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa,

since most of the oceans were by that
time closed by war.

First of all, as it left Southampton, it
had to go through heavily mined

waters in the English Channel.

And then, I think the first port of call
was Lisbon.

We were held up there for some
mysterious week.

And then proceeded to Casablanca just at
the very time that the

French surrendered and

the British feared that the French fleet
would fall into the hands of the

Germans. And so as we pulled into
Casablanca, we had our first air raid.

That was sort of a little taste of the
war.

And from then on, everything was
romantic. We sailed along the coast of

Africa. And the only thing that seemed
startling and dismaying to us was, in a

way, that each of the British ports that
we pulled into refused us the right to

land because...

we were still carrying our German
passports, although they were heavily

over-stemmed with a red J indicating our
outcast status.

But that didn't seem to make much
difference, so that we were actually

enemy aliens in their view.

That trip on the Japanese ship, which
was really a

mixed freighter and passenger liner, was
really magical.

for a boy of 16.

All the joys of adolescence, virtually
all of them, were

available, including the miracle of
eating in the dining room,

getting a menu put in front of you, and
being able to pick everything on the

menu, and everything, not just a choice
of it.

and eat yourself under the table
practically.

There were other good things on that
ship.

One I remember with particular gratitude
was a German Jesuit father.

He was returning. He was on the faculty
of a university in Japan and was coming

from somewhere in Europe.

He took a liking to my brother and me,
and he spent the entire trip to Japan

teaching us Japanese.

So when we arrived, we were moderately
conversant with Japanese. He was

very thoughtful, very wonderful man.

And it meant a great deal to us at that
particular juncture in our lives to have

somebody so caring, so sophisticated, so
funny, so brilliant.

The trip was absolutely extraordinary.

We went to Durban and to Bombay and to
Colombo.

to Singapore and to Hong Kong and to
Shanghai, and then to Kobe, where my

parents awaited me, or us.

It was quite something for a boy of 16
and his brother of 14.

We became sort of adults. I think I
started smoking my first cigarettes at

that time. In any event, then a few
weeks later, unfortunately, we have to

leave Japan.

And then, of course, there was only one
more thing to do since the Japanese, of

course, would not have tolerated us as
permanent residents, and that is to go

to Shanghai, Shanghai really being the
last port of refuge for people

like that. And there we were.

And it's important, I guess, to at this
point say that the

flood of refugees that reached Shanghai
came

on a variety of pathways. Some were
totally penniless, totally dependent

on charity, totally dependent on funds
that came to Shanghai from American

sources. Others, like my father, had
relatives abroad, like my uncle

in Switzerland, who made a little money
available, which...

made us step out of the mainstream of
the refugees and actually

live like many other foreigners in the
international settlement and later the

French Concession.

And to me, I'm sure that there are other
people who've had a horrible time

in this Shanghai experience.

I must say that for me, at 17,

It was an absolute eye-opener.

It was high adventure.

It was an unbelievable juxtaposition of
exotic and

fantastic things.

Also, the idealistic as I was at 17, it
was believing firmly as I did at

that time in a united world or united
Europe after the end of the

war.

it looked to me almost like a mini
United

World with the remarkable coexistence of
so many

nationalities. So I'm sure that if other
people were to hear

me, they would be utterly bewildered
that I could have found anything

particularly pleasant in the Shanghai
experience.

And I must say that I did.

I did because it offered enormous
promise.

But on the other hand, one oughtn't to
believe that this was an

incredible coming together of Chinese
and European cultures

or a melding of peoples.

I'm sorry to say it was not.

The experience of the international
settlement was one,

was sort of the last ripple of a
quasi-colonial period.

It was not a melding of like-minded
people.

So, unfortunately, my exposure to
Chinese life was not nearly as great as

it might have been and as I would have
liked it to be. But also, I think it

must be understood that people, having
arrived there from the horrors of this

persecution, weren't really thinking so
much of being the cultural emissaries,

but it was more a matter of survival and
a matter of getting started again, a

matter of shedding all the baggage of
the past.

I ought to say that

My experience in Shanghai is probably by
no means a typical one.

I don't think anybody's probably yet.
Shanghai is actually a multifaceted

city.

And the experience at that time, during
the early years of the

war, was extraordinary.

It was sort of an island in time and a
mirror of the times.

Strangely, an almost exotic type of
setting.

Here, this is so typical for saying hi.

It's the bund along the river in which
the main commercial buildings were

located. The cafe hotel.

the customs house, the Bank of China,
and then across the river, the

Hongqiu area.

My father, being a very resourceful man,
almost immediately tried to establish

himself in partnership with a Chinese
gentleman.

And eventually,

I went to work because We needed every
penny to support

ourselves.

And fortunately, I found a job with a
Scandinavian firm, a Swedish firm.

Somehow, the doors opened to my future.

And China and Shanghai was really the
wonderful setting for that,

perhaps unrealistically so.

Perhaps it was just a reflection of my
relatively immaturity.

But it happened to me at the right
moment in my life.

Then, in December 1941,

the Pacific War broke out and war came
to Shanghai in earnest.

The Japanese marched in.

My father, who was a sub-tenant in a
little office with a British firm, had

his little room sealed and his
belongings forever disappeared.

including some of the important personal
papers that would have later been very

important.

And so there we were.

But it took about a year or over a year
for the Japanese to actually

move in on us. In February of 1943, the
British and American civilians

were interned.

And those of us who had been refugees
from Nazi oppression and had arrived

after 1937 were all commanded to move
into the

segregation area.

In a particularly unpleasant part of
Shanghai, which

had been the target of Japanese
bombardment during the outbreak of the

Sino. Japanese War in 1937.

So it was already the site where the
most financially destitute refugees

lived, and all of a sudden we had to
move into that area.

And that was not pleasant at all.

In fact, we ultimately managed to
exchange the house we rented in

the International Settlement for a
little hovel in

in that segregation area, and there we
were.

Shanghai can be rather unpleasant.

And during wartime, especially so, can
be terribly hot in summer. We ran out of

water.

We ran out of electricity.

There were shortages of food. In winter,
there was no coal, no heating.

I remember that we used to wear every...

bit of warm clothes that we owned in bed
and outside of bed.

During the daytime, I put a white shirt
over it and a suit and a tie and went to

work with my pass.

And at night, I took my shirt off and
did some very light washing and went

to bed with the same clothes.

Eventually, my boss in that Swedish firm
gave me the

best of presents. He gave me one of the
padded Chinese lixions, one of those

long silk men's gowns that were padded
and that were like a thermos bottle,

very warm, quite delightful.

And that's where we spent the war years.

Good job.

What my father and we particularly
deplored when we were moved to the

segregation area was that the only piece
of green land of

nature that existed in that part of the
world was skillfully cut out

of the area that we were permitted to
live and walk in.

For my father, that was a great...

because he was a passionate walker. He
had, when he lived in Berlin, he

knew every inch of the Grunewald.

And when he came to Shanghai, it didn't
take very long for him to

buy this little book, The Shanghai
Country Walks, written by

a charming and very humorous, very
thoughtful Englishman.

which described the walks that one could
take about Shanghai.

Actually, on first exposure, the
countryside around Shanghai is bleak and

flat, and when the fields are being
fertilized, very, very smelly.

It takes a while to get to love it, but
we did.

And we walked along the canals and over
those stone bridges.

People were shy and charming.

Go back, go back.

Get two more.

The maps were quite ingenious, rather
than conventional sort of

roadmap. They went by little landmarks.
Bridge 1, Bridge

2, Stone Marker, Pagoda,

Second Pagoda, Fourth Bridge, Fifth
Bridge.

And I'm just grateful for the fact
that... Things are pretty constant in

China and nothing much changes from year
to year. And that these landmarks really

guided us.

We found our way.

And it sort of brings back very fond
memories to look at it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

It's a photo of mine that I took on one
of those country walks.

It's rather nice, a creek with Chinese
children and people washing.

I'm rather pleased with it. I hadn't
seen it for years.

Anyhow, that was his great love, and
that was no longer possible once we

moved to this particular area.

In that segregation area of ours called
Hong Q, there was an interesting...

Anyhow, those emigres who had come there
involuntarily brought with them

to Shanghai.

Their sort of regional biases, I still
remember with what

disdain the German refugees spoke of the
Austrians. They felt

they were unpunctual and untidy.

And the Austrians were disdainful of the
Germans, thinking all of them to be

Prussians, very rigid, very correct,
very dull, and very

proper.

And so through this little community,
thousands of miles from their homeland

that had evicted them, ran the same sort
of regional idiosyncrasies and

opinions that had probably...

been there in the old country.

Meanwhile, I, having this path to leave
the segregation

area during working hours, and a few
other people like me, who had in fact to

gain this privilege by rather unpleasant
means of standing for hours and

days in the boiling sunshine for some
little official to

issue or pass.

But when I did have it, I was returning
for a few hours to the heady sort of

European enclave that was still
pretending that

everything was all right.

Although by that time, the British and
the Americans and some other allied

civilians had been locked up.

Things got worse as the war progressed.

shortage it became more pronounced.

The things I never got used to was the
fact that on a winter morning you

would leave your little place and you
would find people frozen to death in the

streets.

That sort of horrible sight never quite
became

something to be accustomed to.

And then

The war began to draw to a close.

Of course, we had really no way of
knowing how it was going, except that

for a while at least, until the Soviet
Union joined the war against Japan,

some faraway Soviet radio station
broadcast in Russian and

announced, as we later discovered,

the point that had been recaptured by
them which gave us a feel that we would

perhaps emerge from this war alive.

It's hard to know what would have
happened to us if, for instance, the

Allied forces had to land in Japan.

There's been a number of speculations
and more than speculations that suggest

that things would have been very dire
for us and for other Allied prisoners of

war.

In any event, the war threw to a close.

It was an extraordinary August night.

We were lying in this funny little house

or hovel of ours.

It was terribly hot.

And all of a sudden, there was sort of a
murmur.

And human voices all of a sudden were
heard.

And the murmur was sort of rising, and
ultimately there was tremendous noise

and a crescendo of voices, people
shouting and screaming and running and

knocking and beating at each other's
wooden doors. And it turned out that

the war was over.

What I was enormously impressed about my
Chinese neighbors

was how enormously civilized they were
throughout the war.

Remember, they were very, very poorly
off. They were very poor.

One would have assumed that we might
have been exposed.

to all sorts of animosity.

But most important is this, that when
the war was over and the Japanese

surrendered,

the Japanese forces of occupation
actually retired,

fled, disappeared, and left behind
several days and maybe a week or week

and a half of an absolute void.

Nobody was in charge.

Nobody enforced law and order.

Nobody policed anything.

It's the time that you would have
assumed tens of thousands of people to

rampage in the streets, you know,
ripping off property.

People were hungry.

People were desperate.

And yet, nothing like that happened.

A very civilized society.

I'm very, very happy to live through
these.

horrible years in China.

Down here is one of the temporary
victory arches made of bamboo to

celebrate the end of the war.

Here's some of the American warships in
port after the end of the Pacific War

with Chinese sampans alongside selling
stuff

to the sailors.

I ran across an old souvenir in an old
trunk of mine which illustrates the

point about the extraordinary
juxtaposition

of businesses and national interests in
this Shanghai

setting of 1941 when the world was
pitted in this deadly struggle.

This funny red book It's called the
Honglist in China.

They coexisted relatively peacefully,
this remarkable

melange of large and little businesses.

And I looked it up, and here was my
father's firm that he established when

he arrived.

It's called Meridiana Trading Company.

Ann Teller, manager.

Herbert Chao, sales manager.

It was on the same page as the
Metropolitan Film Distributing and some

Chinese enterprises.

But what I seem to remember most clearly
is my father and I sitting

over a bunch of pre-war foreign trade

directories and trying to cull out of
this

the names of Firms that, after the war,
he and perhaps I

might be doing business with.

That's what kept us really going in a
way.

That and trying to sort of piece the
news of the war together and

simply surviving.

Not in sort of a...

dramatic way, and not in any way to be
pitied, but the energy during the heat

of summer and in winter was
considerable.

I remember in summer during these days
in that segregation area,

we would all sit on the roof of this
little house and we

would think about the wind.

we would all try to will some wind to
blow to cool us

down. And it was a great pastime. It
took hours, and we had apparently great

fun just waiting for the wind.

It doesn't seem very exciting nowadays,
but at that time it was about all we had

energy for.

Then after the war, of course, we
resumed some sort of a more normal life.

We went back on our long country walks.

We saw friends.

We began to come closely together with
some of our Chinese colleagues and

friends. And we're building some sort of
a community, not at all different from

that prevailing in Europe or in America
these days, trying to build and to

establish a normal world.

Thank you.

I've sometimes thought about the times
of

deprivation and dreadful uncertainty and
hardships of this

time.

But when I think about the dreadful fate
of millions in Europe,

it seems so utterly trivial. It seems
like a picnic in a way.

I never thought of myself, during these
times at least, as a victim other than

to be embroiled in the uncertainties and
hardships of this dreadful

war. Then when the war was over, of
course, came the

discoveries of terrible tales that we
had not perhaps been privy to

while we were cut off from all news of
the world.

I discovered that my grandmother had
been killed in Auschwitz.

My other relatives, likewise.

My great aunt, my great uncle, all sorts
of other people.

It's very, very searing.

And I don't quite recall just how the
knowledge of all this ultimately

became a reality.

It took a...

Life magazine here and a story there.

But those were very terrible times.

And then came a wonderful moment of
retribution. The Chinese

turncoat collaborator who had been

petty official in the government that
the Japanese occupation forces had

installed and who had gotten our house
while we took his little dingy hubble

and hunk you had to return to where he
came from and we returned to where we

came from.

And we had in a way hoped that we would
be a part of

the great rebirth of China.

We had become very, very attached to
some of our Chinese friends. We had been

helped enormously during the war by
Chinese friends. Without whose help,

probably, we would not have made it or
not made it as well.

We were helped also by Europeans and
courageous people of all sorts of

nationalities.

That was very, very important.

But anyhow...

We had somehow hoped that we would be
part of this for a few years.

I had hoped that I would wind up with
some sort of a marvelous job.

My father was eagerly rebuilding what he
had timidly thought of if he

arrived during the early years of the
war.

Unfortunately, things pretty much fell
apart in China.

The government simply was not able to
hold it together.

A terrible inflation took over, and
things really disintegrated. And

so one day our number came up for our
immigration to the United States, and

we took it, and we boarded an American
troop ship,

which had been converted to civilian
purposes, and took the trip to Shanghai.

to San Francisco.

And that's where we landed. My
grandmother awaited us, who had fled

from Germany via Cuba.

And that's, in a way, where I've been
from then on, quite happily.

That's sort of the end of that story.

Thank you.

We'll be right back.

We'll be

right

back.

Thank you.

I'll see you next time.