Baghdadi Jews

The Baghdadi Jews are one of the main Jewish communities of India.

The "Baghdadi" Jewish community of India is so called because its members were chiefly descended from Iraqi Jewish immigrants to India who moved to that country during the British Raj. The name of the community derives from Baghdad, although they do not originate exclusively from Baghdad, but from other areas of Iraq as well, in addition to other Middle-Eastern countries of the Ottoman Empire.

History

The community developed as a result of Jews fleeing religious persecution in Muslim lands to the northwest of India during the . Unlike other Jewish communities in India whose oral tradition attest to a presence in India going back as long as 2000 years, the Baghdadi communities were established relatively recently . While the Baghdadi Jews are known primarily from their presence in India, they also established themselves in trading ports further east, notably in Yangon , Singapore, Penang, and Shanghai, as well as the west.

The Baghdadis have completely assimilated into Indian society. A contributing factor to their assimilation was their physical features and resemblance to the East Indians. The Baghdadis originally came to India from Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran and Afghanistan, so they had dark olive skin and black or dark brown hair, that gave them that distinct Middle Eastern appearance and an Indian resemblance.

Clothing in the Baghdadi community is usually Western clothing for men and the Indian sari for women.

Cuisine

Baghdadi cuisine is an Indian hybrid cuisine, with many Arab, , and Indian influences. Famous Baghdadi dishes include Beef curry, Baghdadi Biryani and Baghdadi Jewish parathas. A Baghdadi version of Tandoori chicken is also popular .

Famous Baghdadi Jews

*Lord Kadoorie
*Abraham Sofaer, actor
*, Bollywood actress
*J. F. R. Jacob, Indian military commander in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971
*Anish Kapoor, British Asian sculptor; Baghdadi Jewish mother
* & Simon Reuben, British Asian businessmen
*David Sassoon, merchant and founder of the Sassoon family
*Albert Abdullah David Sassoon, merchant
*Sassoon David Sassoon, merchant
*Sassoon J. David, banker and member of the Bombay Municipal Corporation
*Brian George, Israeli-born character actor of Baghdadi-Indian Jewish descent most well-known for playing the role of a Pakistani shop owner,"Bhabu", on Seinfeld

Shanghai ghetto

The Shanghai ghetto was an area of approximately one square mile in the Hongkou District of Shanghai, where about 20,000 Jewish refugees lived during World War II, having fled from Nazi Germany, , Poland and Lithuania.

The refugees were settled in the poorest and most crowded area of the city. Local Jewish families and American Jewish charities aided them with shelter, food and clothing.

Background

Jews in Germany of 1930s

By the end of the 1920s, most German Jews were loyal to Germany, assimilated and relatively prosperous. They served in the German army and contributed to every field of German science, business and culture. After the Nazis were elected to power in 1933, the state-sponsored persecution such as the Nuremberg Laws and the Kristallnacht drove masses of German Jews to seek asylum abroad, but as Chaim Weizmann wrote in 1936, "The world seemed to be divided into two parts — those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter."
The Evian Conference demonstrated that by the end of the 1930s it was almost impossible to find a destination open for Jewish immigration.

According to Dana Janklowicz-Mann,
“Jewish men were being picked up and put into concentration camps. They were told you have ''X'' amount of time to leave — two weeks, a month — if you can find a country that will take you. Outside, their wives and friends were struggling to get a passport, a visa, anything to help them get out. But embassies were closing their doors all over, and countries, including the United States, were closing their borders. … It started as a rumor in Vienna… ‘There’s a place you can go where you don’t need a visa. They have free entry.’ It just spread like fire and whoever could, went for it.”

Shanghai after 1937

The of Shanghai was established by the Treaty of Nanking. Police, jurisdiction and passport control was implemented by the foreign autonomous board. As a result of the Battle of Shanghai in 1937, the city by and the Japanese army and Chinese Reformed Government did not establish passport regime. The port of Shanghai was the only place in the world that allowed entry with neither a visa nor a passport. Under the Unequal Treaties between China and European countries, visas were only required to book tickets departing from Europe.

By the time when most German Jews arrived, two other Jewish communities had already settled in the city: the wealthy Baghdadi Jews, including the Kadoorie and Sassoon families, and the who fled their country following the 1917 October Revolution and formed part of the .

Chiune Sugihara and Ho Feng Shan

Many in the Russian Jewish community were saved by Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania. Among those saved in the Shanghai ghetto were leaders and students of Mir yeshiva, the only European yeshiva to survive the Holocaust. They managed to flee across the vast territory of Russia by train.

Similarly, thousands of Austrian Jews were saved by the Chinese consul-general in Vienna Ho Feng Shan, who issued visas during 1938-1940 against the orders of his superior the Chinese ambassador in Berlin, Chen Jie.

Arrival of German Jews

The refugees who managed to purchase tickets for luxurious Japanese cruise steamships departing from Genoa later described their three-week journey with plenty of food and entertainment — between persecution in Germany and squalid ghetto in Shanghai — as surreal. Some passengers attempted to make unscheduled departures in Egypt, hoping to smuggle themselves into the British Mandate of Palestine.

On August 15, 1938, first Jewish refugees from Anschluss Austria arrived by Italian ship. By June 1939, 8,200 Jewish refugees had arrived.

Much needed aid was provided by International Committee for European Immigrants , established by Victor Sassoon and Paul Komor and Committee for the Assistance of European Jewish Refugees , founded by . These organizations prepared the housing in Hongkou, a relatively cheap district compared with the International settlement or the French settlement. They were accommodated in shabby apartments and six camps in a former school.
The Japanese occupiers of Shanghai regarded German Jews as "stateless persons".

Most of the refugees arrived after 1937. Further immigration restrictions were imposed in 1939; however, a numbers of Jews continued to arrive until the by Japan in December 1941.

Life in the ghetto

The authorities were unprepared for massive immigration and the arriving refugees faced harsh conditions in the impoverished Hongkou District: 10 per room, near-starvation, disastrous sanitation and scant employment.

The Baghdadis and later the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee provided some assistance with the housing and food problems. Faced with language barriers, extreme poverty, rampant disease and isolation, the refugees were able to make the transition from being supported by welfare agencies to establishing a functioning community. Jewish cultural life flourished: schools were established, newspapers were published, theaters produced plays, sports teams participated in training and competitions and even cabarets thrived.

After the Pearl Harbor attack

After Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor, the wealthy Baghdadi Jews were interned, and American charitable funds ceased. As communication with the US was broken, unemployment and inflation intensified and times got harder for the refugees.

The JDC liaison Laura Margolis, who came to Shanghai, attempted to stabilize the situation by getting permission from the Japanese authorities to continue her fundraising effort, turning for assistance to the Russian Jews who arrived before 1937 and were exempt from the new restrictions.

Further restrictions

As World War II intensified, the Nazis stepped up pressure on Japan to hand over the Shanghai Jews. Warren Kozak describes the episode when the Japanese military governor of the city sent for the Jewish community leaders. The delegation included Amshinover rabbi Shimon Kalish. The Japanese governor was curious: "Why do the Germans hate you so much?"

"Without hesitation and knowing the fate of his community hung on his answer, Reb Kalish told the translator : "''Zugim weil mir senen orientalim'' — Tell him the Germans hate us because we are Oriental." The governor, whose face had been stern throughout the confrontation, broke into a slight smile. In spite of the military alliance, he did not accede to the German demand and the Shanghai Jews were never handed over."


On November 15 1942, the idea of a restricted ghetto was approved. On February 18 1943, the Japanese authorities declared a "Designated Area for Stateless Refugees", ordering those who arrived after 1937 to move their residences and businesses into the one-square-mile area within three months, by May 15. The stateless refugees needed permission from the Japanese to dispose of their property; others needed permission to move into the ghetto. While the ghetto had no barbed wire or walls, a curfew was enforced, the area was patrolled, food was rationed, and everyone needed passes to enter or leave the ghetto.

Although temporary passes were issued to work outside the ghetto, these were granted arbitrarily and were severely curtailed after the first year. But the fact that the Chinese did not leave the Hongkou ghetto meant the Jews were not isolated. Nevertheless economic conditions worsened; psychological adjustment to ghettoization was difficult; the winter of 1943 was severe and hunger was widespread.

Partial list of notable Shanghai ghetto survivors

* Dr. Jakob Rosenfeld, who spent nine years overseeing health care for the Communist army.
* Michael Medavoy, a Hollywood executive at Columbia, Orion and TriStar Pictures.
* Peter Max, American pop artist.
* W. Michael Blumenthal, served as the .
* Eric Halpern, a cofounder of the Far Eastern Economic Review and its first editor.
* Shaul Eisenberg, who founded and ran the Eisenberg Group of Companies in Israel.
*Charles K. Bliss, whose Chinese experience inspired him to create Blissymbols.
* Rene Rivkin, Australian financier.
* Laurence Tribe, professor, Harvard Law School, Carl M. Loeb University Professor
* Gunther Gassenheimer, Rabbi, Temple Israel, Alameda, CA

Films

* Documentary by Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amir Mann.
*''The Port of Last Resort: Zuflucht in Shanghai'' Documentary directed by Joan Grossman and Paul Rosdy.

Shanghai Russians

The term Shanghai Russians refers to a sizable Russian diaspora that flourished in Shanghai, China between the World Wars. By 1937 it is estimated that there were as many as 25,000 anti-Bolshevik Russians living in the city, the largest European group by far. Most of them had come from the Russian Far East, where, with , the had maintained a presence as late as the autumn of 1922.

In the late 19th century, the Russian imperial government was shifting the focus of its investment to Manchuria. As a consequence, China's trade with its northern neighbour soared. As soon as there was a regular ferry service between Vladivostok and Shanghai, the Russian tea merchants started to settle in the commercial capital of China. About 350 Russian citizens resided within the Shanghai International Settlement in 1905. In order to protect their interests, the was opened in 1896. The old building of the consulate, still occupied by the Russian diplomats, ranks among the Bund's minor landmarks.

The bulk of the Russian exile community relocated to Shanghai from Vladivostok following the fall of the Provisional Priamurye Government at the close of the Russian Civil War. 's squadron alone brought several thousand from Vladivostok in 1922. Many Harbin Russians, attracted by the booming economy of Shanghai, moved from Manchuria to the coast over the following years. Barred by both distance and money from joining established communities in Paris and Berlin, a large number gravitated towards Shanghai, a freeport at the time, requiring no visa or work-permit for entry. For this same reason it was later to become a refuge for Jews fleeing the Nazis.

Although free, and relatively secure, conditions for the émigrés were far from ideal. For one thing they were all stateless, as the Soviet government had revoked the citizenship of all political exiles in 1921. The only travel document most of them had was the Nansen passport, issued by the League of Nations. Unlike other foreigners in China they did not have the benefits conferred by extraterritoriality, which granted immunity from local laws, complex and almost impossible for foreigners to understand.

This was made worse by the barriers to employment opportunities, which in this international city required a good command of English as a minimum requirement. There were whole families that depended on wives or daughters who made a living as taxi dancers .

Some did manage to make a go of things, teaching music or French. Other women took work as dress-makers, shop assistants and hairdressers. By slow degrees, and despite the many difficulties, the community not only retained a good deal of cohesion but did begin to flourish, both economically and culturally. By the mid 1930s there were two Russian schools, as well as a variety of cultural and sporting clubs. There were Russian-language newspapers and a radio station. An important part was also played by the local Russian Orthodox Church under the guidance of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco.

Many exiles set up restaurants in the district known as Little Russia, and Russian musicians achieved a dominance over the city's foreign-run orchestra. The most famous Russian singer, Alexander Vertinsky, relocated from Paris to Shanghai; and Fyodor Chaliapin was seen on tour. Vladimir Tretchikoff, the "King of Kitsch", spent his youth in the city. Russian teachers offered lessons in theatre and dancing. Margot Fonteyn, the English ballerina, studied dance in Shanghai as a child with Russian masters, one of whom, , had formerly danced with the in Moscow.

But it was the contribution that Russian women made to the entertainment industry, dancing and otherwise, that gave the city its exotic reputation, noted in the guidebooks of the day. A fictionalized portrayal of their predicament is presented in the film ''The White Countess'' . Those who were left became the focus of earnest campaigns by the League of Nations and others to end the "white slave trade."

The Shanghai Russians survived through the difficult days of the Japanese occupation, but left in the end with the advance of the Communists. They were forced to flee, first to a refugee camp on the island of Tubabao in the Philippines and then mainly to the United States and Australia. The Russian monuments of Shanghai did not escape the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. The Pushkin statue, funded by public subscription and unveiled on the centenary of the poet's death, was smashed by the Red Guards in 1966. It was subsequently restored in 1987, and remains the only monument to a foreign writer in China. The Orthodox Cathedral of St. Nicholas, consecrated and elaborately frescoed in 1933, was converted into a washing machine factory, and is now a restaurant.

Shanghai International Settlement

The Shanghai Municipal Council was the governing body which administered the combined and in Shanghai, known as the Shanghai International Settlement . It was established in 1854 to reorganise the existing concessions. Wholly foreign-controlled, the council was staffed by individuals of all nationalities, including Britons, Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, and Japanese. Chinese members were not permitted to join the council until 1928.

Representing a wide spectrum of nations, the Shanghai Municipal Council along with the foreign residents of the International Settlement recreated the architecture and institutions of their homelands in Shanghai. It maintained its own police force, the Shanghai Municipal Police and even possessed its own military reserve in the Shanghai Volunteer Corps . The immense presence of the council and the settlement's foreign residents can still be seen throughout present day Shanghai, most notably the architecture of The Bund.

Amongst the many members who served on the council, its American chairman during the 1920's, Stirling Fessenden, is the most notable. In addition to serving as the settlement's main administrator during Shanghai's most turbulent era, he was also remembered for being more "British" than the council's British members. The International Settlement was not a British possession, unlike its neighbor, the French Concession, which was formally part of the French colonial empire, under the direction initially of the Governor-General of Indo-China. Thus the SMC exercised a considerable degree of political autonomy, not always wisely. Actions in the 1920s in particular, such as the May 30 1925 shooting of Chinese by members of the Shanghai Municipal Police, embarrassed and threatened the British Empire's position in China.


Over the years a large number of Chinese took up residency at the International Settlement, either to escape civil conflict, or to seek better economic opportunities. In 1932 there were already 1,040,780 Chinese living within the International Settlement, with another 400,000 fleeing into the area after the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937. Moreover, Shanghai was for a time the only place in the world that unconditionally offered refuge for Jews who were escaping from the s, although they often lived in squalid conditions in an area known as the Shanghai ghetto.

The Council was formally abolished twice. In July 1943 it was retroceded to the City Government of Shanghai, then in the hands of the pro-Japanese Wang Jingwei Government, by its then Japanese leaders on the Council. Anglo-American influence had effectively ended after 8 December 1941, when the Imperial Japanese Army entered and occupied the city. Although senior Allied personnel and councillors were removed from their posts, most Allied nationals working for the administration remained in their jobs until they were interned after February 1943. The Settlement was also returned to Chinese control in the Sino-British Friendship Treaty of February 1943 between Britain and the Nationalist Government of the Republic of China under Chiang Kai-shek. After the war a Liquidation Commission fitfully met to discuss the remaining details of the handover. The Council's headquarters building still stands in downtown Shanghai.

After 1949, city government was re-instated under the .

List of Chairmen of the Shanghai Municipal Council

* Arnold Foster
*
* J. S. Fearon
* - Quarter

Consul General of France

The French Concession was governed by a separate municipal council, under the direction of the Consul General. The French Concession was not part of the International Settlement.

Sassoon family

The Sassoon family is a family of international renown, which originated in the , said to have originally been descended from Ibn Shoshans, of Spain.

Sassoon ben Salih was a banker to the of Baghdad. His son fled from a new and unfriendly vali, going first to the Gulf port of Bushehr in 1828 and then to Bombay, India, in 1832, with his large family. In Bombay, he built the international business called David S. Sassoon, with the policy of staffing it with people brought from Baghdad. They filled the functions of the various branches of his business in India, Burma, Malay, and east Asia. In each branch, he maintained a rabbi. His wealth and munificence were proverbial, and his business extended to China, where the Sassoon Building on the Bund in Shanghai became a noted landmark, and then to England.

His eight sons also branched out into many directions. , his son by his first wife, had been the first of the sons to go to China, in 1844. He later returned to Bombay, before leaving the firm to establish E. D. Sassoon in 1867, with offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Another son, Albert Abdullah David Sassoon took on the running of the firm on his father's death, and notably constructed the Sassoon Docks, the first wet dock built in western India. With two of his brothers he later became prominent in England and the family great friends of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII.

Of those who settled in England, Sir Edward Albert Sassoon , the son of Albert, married Aline Caroline de Rothschild, and was a Conservative member of Parliament from 1899 until his death. The seat was then inherited by his son Sir Philip Sassoon from 1912 until his death. Sir Philip served in World War I as military secretary to Field Marshal Sir and, during the 1920s and 1930s, as Britain's undersecretary of state for air. The twentieth-century English poet, memoirist, and anti-war figure Siegfried Sassoon was David's great-grandson. Intermarriage in England has caused the general loss of Judaism within this branch.

The branch that carried on the ancestral tradition has been represented by Rabbi Solomon David Sassoon , who moved from Letchworth to London and then to Jerusalem in 1970. He was the son of the David Sassoon who collected Jewish books and manuscripts and who catalogued them in Ohel David, in two volumes. This David was the son of Flora Abraham, who had moved from India to England in 1901 and established a famous salon in her London home. Solomon Sassoon had one son, Isaac S.D. Sassoon, who is also a rabbi.

Family members

*David Sassoon
**''by 1st wife Hannah Joseph''
**
***
****
**Elias David Sassoon
***Jacob Elias Sassoon, 1st Baronet
***Edward Elias Sassoon, 2nd Baronet
****Victor Sassoon, 3rd Baronet
**''by 2nd wife Flora Hayim''
**Sassoon David Sassoon
***Alfred Ezra Sassoon
****Siegfried Sassoon
**Solomon Sassoon
***David Solomon Sassoon
****Rabbi Solomon David Sassoon
*****Rabbi Isaac S.D. Sassoon

Radhanite

The Radhanites were medieval merchants. Whether the term, which is used by only a limited number of primary sources, refers to a specific guild, or a clan, or is a generic term for Jewish merchants in the trans-Eurasian trade network is unclear. Jewish merchants dominated trade between the and Islamic worlds during the early Middle Ages . Many trade routes previously established under the Roman Empire continued to function during that period largely through their efforts. Their trade network covered much of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of India and China.

Etymology

Several etymologies have been suggested for the word "Radhanite". Many scholars, including Barbier de Meynard and Moshe Gil, believe it refers to a district in Mesopotamia called "the land of Radhan" in Arabic and Hebrew texts of the period. Others maintain that their center was the city of in northern Persia. Cecil Roth and Claude Cahen, among others, make the same claim about the Rh?ne River valley in France, which is ''Rhodanus'' in Latin. The latter claim that the center of Radhanite activity was probably in France as all of their trade routes began there. Still others maintain that the name derives from the terms ''rah'' "way, path" and ''dān'' "one who knows", meaning "one who knows the way". English-language sources added the suffix ''-ite'' to the term, as is done with ethnonyms or names derived from place names.

Activities

The activities of the Radhanites are documented by Abū l-Qasim Ubaid Allah ibn Khordadbeh, the Director of Posts and Police for the province of Jibal under the Abbasid Caliph al-Mu'tamid , when he wrote ''Kitab al-Masalik wal-Mamalik'' , probably around 870. Ibn Khordadbeh described the Radhanites as sophisticated and multilingual. He outlined four main trade routes utilized by the Radhanites in their journeys. All four began in the Rh?ne Valley of France and terminated in China. The commodities carried by the Radhanites were primarily those which combined small bulk and high demand, including spices, perfumes, jewelry, and silk. They are also described as transporting oils, incense, steel weapons, furs, and .

Text of Ibn Khordadbeh's account

: These merchants speak , , , the , , and languages. They journey from West to East, from East to West, partly on land, partly by sea. They transport from the West eunuchs, female slaves, boys, , , marten and other furs, and swords. They take ship from Firanja '''', on the , and make for Farama ''''. There they load their goods on camel-back and to al-Kolzum '''', a distance of twenty-five ''farsakhs'' ''''. They embark in the and sail from al-Kolzum to al-Jar '''' and , then they go to , India, and China. On their return from China they carry back musk, aloes, camphor, cinnamon, and other products of the Eastern countries to al-Kolzum and bring them back to Farama, where they again embark on the Western Sea. Some make sail for Constantinople to sell their goods to the ; others go to the palace of the to place their goods. Sometimes these Jew merchants, when embarking from the land of the Franks, on the Western Sea, make for Antioch ''''; thence by land to al-Jabia '''', where they arrive after three days’ march. There they embark on the Euphrates and reach Baghdad, whence they sail down the , to al-Obolla. From al-Obolla they sail for Oman, Sind, , and China ...

: These different journeys can also be made by land. The merchants that start from Spain or France go to Sus al-Aksa '''' and then to Tangier, whence they walk to Kairouan and the capital of Egypt. Thence they go to ar-Ramla, visit Damascus, al-Kufa, Baghdad, and al-Basra, cross Ahwaz, Fars, Kirman, Sind, Hind, and arrive in China.
:Sometimes, also, they take the route behind Rome and, passing through the country of the , arrive at , the capital of the Khazars. They embark on the , arrive at Balkh, betake themselves from there across the , and continue their journey toward Yurt, , and from there to China.

Historical significance

During the Early Middle Ages the Islamic policies of the Middle East and North Africa and the Christian kingdoms of Europe often banned each others' merchants from entering their ports. Corsairs of both sides raided the shipping of their adversaries at will. The Radhanites functioned as neutral go-betweens, keeping open the lines of communication and trade between the lands of the old Roman Empire and the Far East. As a result of the revenue they brought, Jewish merchants enjoyed significant privileges under the early Carolingians in France and throughout the Muslim world, a fact that greatly vexed the local Church authorities.

While most trade between Europe and East Asia had historically been conducted via Persian and Central Asian intermediaries, the Radhanites were among the first to establish a trade network which stretched from Western Europe to Eastern Asia. More remarkable still, they engaged in this trade regularly and over an extended period of time, centuries before Marco Polo and ibn Battuta brought their tales of travel in the Orient to the Christians and the Muslims, respectively. Indeed, ibn Battuta is believed to have travelled with the Muslim traders who travelled to the Orient on routes similar to those used by the Radhanites.

While traditionally many historians believed that the art of Chinese paper-making had been transmitted to Europe via Arab merchants who got the secret from taken at , some believe that Jewish merchants such as the Radhanites were instrumental in bringing paper-making west. Joseph of Spain, possibly a Radhanite, is credited by some sources with introducing the so-called Hindu-Arabic numerals from India to Europe. Historically, Jewish communities used letters of credit to transport large quantities of money without the risk of theft from at least classical times. This system was developed and put into force on an unprecedented scale by medieval Jewish merchants such as the Radhanites; if so, they may be counted among the precursors to the banks that arose during the late Middle Ages and early modern period.

Some scholars believe that the Radhanites may have played a role in the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism. In addition, they may have helped establish Jewish communities at various points along their trade routes, and were probably involved in the early Jewish settlement of Eastern Europe, Central Asia, China and India.



Besides ibn Khordadbeh, the Radhanites are mentioned by name only by a handful of sources. Ibn al-Faqih's early tenth century ''Kitab al-Buldan'' mentions them, but much of ibn al-Faqih's information was derived from ibn Khordadbeh's work. ''Sefer ha-Dinim'', a Hebrew account of the travels of Yehuda ben Meir of Mainz, named Przemy?l and Kiev as trading sites along the Radhanite route. In the early twelfth century, a French-Jewish trader named Yitzhak Dorbelo wrote that he travelled with Radhanite merchants to Poland.

The end of the Radhanite age

The fall of the Tang Dynasty of China in 908 and the destruction of the Khaganate some sixty years later led to widespread chaos in Inner Eurasia, the Caucasus and China. Trade routes became unstable and unsafe, a situation exacerbated by invasions of Persia and the Middle East, and the Silk Road largely collapsed for centuries. Moreover, the fragmentation of the into small states provided more opportunities for non-Jews to enter the market. This period saw the rise of the mercantile city-states, especially Genoa, Venice, Pisa, and Amalfi, who viewed the Radhanites as unwanted competitors.

The economy of Europe was profoundly affected by the disappearance of the Radhanites. For example, documentary evidence indicates that many spices in regular use during the early Middle Ages completely disappeared from European tables in the 900s. Jews had previously, in large parts of Western Europe, enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the spice trade.

Sources

* "China." ''Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present,'' vol. 1, ed. Cynthia Clark Northrup, p. 29. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005.
* . ''Jewish Travellers in the Middle Ages''. New York: Dover Publications, 1987.
* . ''The Rise and Fall of Paradise''. New York: Putnam Books, 1983.
* . "Rādhānites". ''Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia''. Norman Roth, ed. Routledge, 2002. pp 558–561.
* . ''The Jews of Khazaria.'' 2nd ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2006.
* De Goeje, Michael. ''Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum''. Leiden, 1889. Volume VI.
* ''The History of the Jewish Khazars,'' Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954.
* Fossier, Robert, ed. ''The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages,'' vol. 1: 350–950. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997.
* Gottheil, Richard, ''et al.'' ''Jewish Encyclopedia''. Funk and Wagnalls, 1901-1906.
* . "The Radhanite Merchants and the Land of Radhan." ''Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient'' 17:3 . 299–328.
* Gregory of Tours. ''De Gloria Martyrorum''.
* Josephus. ''Antiquities of the Jews''.
* . ''Jewish Merchant Adventurers: A Study of the Radanites''. London: Edward Goldston, 1948.
* "Radanites". ''Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present,'' vol. 3, ed. Cynthia Clark Northrup, p. 763–764. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2005.
* . "The Khazar Kingdom's Conversion to Judaism." ''Harvard Ukrainian Studies'' 3:2 .
* . "Dzieje Gospodarcze ?ydów Korony i Litwy w Czasach Przedrozbiorowych." ''?ydzi w Polsce Odrodzonej, ed. A. Hafftka et al. Warsaw, 1936.
* Weissenbron, Zur. ''Gesch. der Jetzigen Ziffern'', 1892.

Morris Cohen (adventurer)

Morris Abraham "Two-Gun" Cohen was a Jewish soldier and adventurer who became aide-de-camp to the leader Sun Yat-sen and a major-general in the Chinese army.

According to a 1954 biography written by Charles Drage with Cohen's assistance, Morris Cohen was born in London in 1889 to a family that had just arrived from Poland. However Cohen was actually born into a poor Jewish family in Radzanów, Poland. Soon after his birth in 1887, the Cohens escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe and emigrated to the St. George's in the East district in London's .¹

Cohen loved the theaters, the streets, the markets, the foods and the boxing arenas of the English capital more than he did the Jews' Free School, and in April 1900 he was run in as "a person suspected of attempting to pick pockets". A magistrate sent him to the Hayes Industrial School, an institution set up by the likes of Lord Rothschild to care for and train wayward Jewish lads. When he was released in 1905 and Cohen's parents shipped the young Morris off to western Canada with the hope that the fresh air and open plains of the New World would reform his ways.

Cohen initially worked on a farm near Whitewood, Saskatchewan. He tilled the land, tended the livestock and learned to shoot a gun and play cards. He did that for a year, and then started wandering through the Western provinces, making a living as a carnival talker, gambler, grifter and successful real estate broker. Some of his activities landed him in jail.

Cohen also became friendly with some of the Chinese exiles who had come to work on the Canadian Pacific Railways. He loved the camaraderie and the food, and in came to the aid of a Chinese restaurant owner who was being robbed. Cohen training in the alleyways of London came in handy, and he knocked out the thief and tossed him out into the street. Such an act was unheard of the time, as few white men ever came to the aid of the Chinese. The Chinese welcomed Cohen into their fold and eventually invited him to join the Tongmenghui, Sun Yat-sen's anti-Manchu organization. Cohen begun to advocate for the Chinese.

Morris Cohen soon moved to the city of Edmonton in the neighboring province of Alberta. There he became manager of one of the provincial capital’s leading real estate agencies and was appointed, on the personal recommendation of the Attorney General Sir Charles Cross, to serve the province as a Commissioner of Oaths, an appointment offered only to “fit and proper persons”².

Cohen fought with the Canadian Railway Troops in Europe during World War I where part of his job involved supervising Chinese laborers. He also saw some fierce fighting at the Western Front, especially during the Battle of Passchendaele. After the war, he resettled in Canada. But the economy had declined and the days of the real estate boom were long over. Cohen looked for something new to do, and in 1922 he headed to China to help close a railway deal for Sun Yat-sen with Northern Construction and JW Stewart Ltd. Once there, he asked Sun for a job as a bodyguard.

In Shanghai and Canton Cohen trained Sun's small armed forces to box and shoot, and told people that he was an aide-de-camp and an acting colonel in Sun Yat-sen's army. His lack of Chinese—he spoke a pidgin form of Cantonese at best—was thankfully not a problem since Sun, his wife Soong Ching-ling and many of their associates were western educated and spoke English. Cohen's colleagues started calling him Ma Kun, and he soon became one of Sun's main protectors, shadowing the Chinese leader to conferences and war zones. After one battle where he was nicked by a bullet, Cohen started carrying a second gun. The western community were intrigued by Sun's gun-totting protector and began calling him "Two-Gun Cohen." The name stuck.

Sun died of cancer in 1925, and Cohen went to work for a series of Southern Chinese Kuomintang leaders, from Sun's son, Sun Fo, and Sun's brother-in-law, the banker TV Soong, to such warlords as Li Jishen and Chen Jitang. He was also acquainted with Chiang Kai-shek, whom he knew from when Chiang was commandant of the Whampoa Military Academy, which was located outside of Canton. His dealing with Chiang, though, were minimal since Cohen was allied with southern leaders who were generally opposed to Chiang. Cohen ran security for his bosses and acquired weapons and gunboats. Eventually he earned the rank of acting general, though he never led any troops.

When the Japanese invaded China in 1937, Cohen eagerly joined the fight. He rounded up weapons for the Chinese and even did work for the British intelligence agency, Special Operations Executive . Cohen was in Hong Kong when the Japanese attacked in December 1941. He placed Soong Qingling and her sister Ailing onto one of the last planes out of the British colonies.

Cohen stayed behind to fight, and when Hong Kong fell later that month, the Japanese tossed him into Stanley Prison Camp. There the Japanese badly beat him and he languished in Stanley until he was part of a rare prisoner exchange in late 1943.

Cohen sailed back to Canada, settled in Montreal and married Judith Clark, who ran a successful women's boutique. He made regular visits back to China with the hope of establishing work or business ties. Mostly, though, Cohen saw old friends, sat in hotel lobbies and spun out tales—many of them tall—of his exploits. It was his own myth making, together with the desire of others to fabricate yarns about him, that has resulted in much of the misinformation about Cohen, from the claim that he had a hand in the making of modern China, to such outlandish ones like him having an affair with Soong Qingling and a wife in Canada back in the 1920s. After the 1949 Communist revolution, Cohen was one of the few people who was able to move between Taiwan and mainland China. Unfortunately, his prolonged absences took a toll on his marriage, and he and Judith divorced in 1956.

Cohen then settled with his widowed sister, Leah Cooper, in Salford, England. There he was surrounded by siblings, nephews and nieces and became a beloved family patriarch. His standing as a loyal aide to Sun Yat-sen helped him maintain good relations with both Taiwanese and Communist Party of China leaders, and he soon was able to arrange consulting jobs with Vickers , and Decca Radar. His last visit to China was during the start of the Cultural Revolution as an honored guest of Zhou Enlai.

Morris Cohen died 1970 in Salford. He is buried in Blakeley Jewish Cemetery in Manchester³

Books about Cohen

* Charles Drage - ''Two-Gun Cohen''
* Paolo Frere - ''The Pedlar and the Doctor''
* Daniel S. Levy - ''Two-Gun Cohen: A Biography''

Mir yeshiva

Mir Yeshiva may refer to:

* Mir yeshiva
* Mir yeshiva
* Mir yeshiva
* Mir yeshiva

Jakob Rosenfeld

Jakob Rosenfeld , more commonly known as General Luo, served as the Minister of Health in the Government of China under Mao Zedong.

Rosenfeld, a Jew born in Lemberg, the Austro-Hungarian Empire , was raised in W?llersdorf near Wiener Neustadt. He graduated in medicine with specialization in urology from Vienna University. After the Anschluss, Rosenfeld was deported to Dachau concentration camp and later to . In 1939 he was released and had to leave the country within two weeks. Since China did not require Jews to apply for a visa, he fled to Shanghai.

Since 1941 he served the Chinese Communist force as a field doctor for the New Fourth Army, the Eighth Route Army and the Northeast People's Liberation Army during the outbreak of Second Sino-Japanese war and Chinese civil war. He chose to remain in China after the fall of the Nazi regime and participated in the march on Beijing before returning to Europe to search for relatives in 1949, the year the People's Republic of China was founded.

In 1950 he to Israel where he died two years later following heart failure.

History of the Jews in Taiwan

Unlike mainland China, the Jewish presence in Taiwan is relatively young, and was never numerous. The first sizable presence began in the 1950s, when religious services were held in the U.S. military chapel, to which civilians also had access.

In 1975, Rabbi Ephraim Einhorn arrived to serve as the island's sole rabbi. Since then, the Taiwanese Jewish community has been comprised largely of foreign business executives and their families, with services also frequently attended by visitors to the island. Under Rabbi Einhorn, holiday services have been held at various hotels in Taipei. Under an agreement between the rabbi and the management of the Sheraton Taipei Hotel, there are weekly services, kosher meals, and a Jewish library owned by the rabbi. Attendance peaks around the High Holy Days, numbering between 60 and 100.

Because the state of Israel has full diplomatic relations with mainland China, it cannot fully recognize the government of Taiwan, which China considers separatist. Nevertheless, Israel maintains an Economic and Cultural office in Taipei. In 2006, there was $1.3 billion worth of bilateral trade between Israel and Taiwan.

At this time, Taiwan has some 150 Jews, which is a slightly lower figure than in 1971, when the island had full diplomatic representation at the UN.

In 2002 a Holocaust Museum was opened in Bao-An, Tainan County. It was founded by Chou Chou An, a Taiwanese priest who follows the Messianic Jews. Chou Chou An got his religious education in Japan. The Kyoto Holocaust Museum has donated several artefacts to the Holocaust Museum in Tainan.

Sources

*Yiu, Cody "Taipei's Jewish community has deep roots" Taipei Times 2/15/2005
*Luxner, Larry "Keeping the Faith in Taiwan" Jewish Telegraphic Agency 11/4/2007

History of the Jews in Hong Kong

Jews first arrived in Hong Kong when the territory was ceded to Great Britain by China in 1842. The Jews transferred their offices from neighboring to Hong Kong and helped to develop this new port.
The Hong Kong Jewish Community was first established in 1857 and the Ohel Leah synagogue, built by Sir Jacob Sassoon, was opened in 1900.
The outbreak of World War II and the consequent Japanese occupation of Hong Kong temporarily suspended all Jewish activities there.
The Jewish population numbered 60 in 1882; 100 in 1921, 250 in 1954, 230 in 1959; and 200 in 1968. Since the 1960s, Israel began to appoint Honorary Consuls to Hong Kong.

From the 1960s onwards, Hong Kong's development as a trade and finance centre has attracted tens of thousands of foreigners, among them Jews from the USA, Israel, the UK, Australia and Canada. They revitalized the local Jewish Community. In 1997, 2,500 Jews were living in Hong Kong, two thirds of them Americans and Israelis.

The community has four synagogues, three of which are served by rabbis. There is also a large Jewish Community Centre, which contains a library, recreational facilities and a kosher restaurant, and is the leading venue of Jewish activities in the city. There are two Jewish schools, the Carmel school for children up to eight years old and the Ezekiel Abraham school which provides after school learning for older children.

History of the Jews in China

'''




Jews and Judaism in China have had a long history. Jewish settlers are documented in China as early as the 7th or 8th century , but may have arrived during the mid Han Dynasty, or even as early as 231 BCE. Relatively isolated communities developed through the and Dynasties all the way through the Qing Dynasty , most notably in the Kaifeng Jews . By the time of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, few if any native Chinese Jews were known to have maintained the practice of their religion and culture. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, however, some international Jewish groups have helped Chinese Jews rediscover their heritage.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Jewish immigrants from around the world arrived with Western commercial and quasi-colonialist influences, particularly in the commercial centers of Shanghai and Hong Kong, which was for a time a British colony. Tens of thousands of Jewish refugees escaping from the and the Holocaust in Europe were to find sanctuary in China in successive decades.

Today, with the current expansion of trade and globalization, Jews of many ethnicities from multiple regions of the world have settled permanently and temporarily in China's major cities.

Overview

China's Jewish communities have been ethnically diverse ranging from the Jews of Kaifeng and other places during the history of Imperial China, who, it is reported, came to be more or less totally assimilated into Chinese culture, to 19th and 20th century , to , to Ashkenazi Jews from Europe.

The presence of a community of Jewish immigrants in China is consistent with the history of the Jewish people during the first and second millennia CE, which saw them disperse and settle throughout the Eurasian landmass, with an especial concentration throughout central Asia.
By the ninth century, ibn Khordadbeh noted the travels of Jewish merchants called ''Radhanites'', whose trade took them to China via The Silk Road through Central Asia and India.

During the period of international opening and quasi-colonialism, the first group to settle in China were Jews who arrived in China under British protection following the First Opium War. Many of these Jews were of Indian or Iraqi origin, due to British colonialism in these regions. The second community came in the first decades of the 20th century when many Jews arrived in Hong Kong and Shanghai during those cities' periods of economic expansion.

Many more arrived as refugees from the Russian Revolution of 1917. A surge of Jews and Jewish families was to arrive in the late 1930s and 1940s, for the purpose of seeking refuge from the Holocaust in Europe and were predominantly of European origin. Shanghai was notable for its volume of Jewish refugees, most of whom left after the war, the rest relocating prior to or immediately after the establishment of the People's Republic of China.

Over the centuries, the Kaifeng community came to be virtually indistinguishable from the Chinese population and is not recognized by the Chinese government as a separate . This is as a result of having adopted many Han Chinese customs including patrilineal descent, as well as extensive intermarriage with the local population. Since their religious practices are functionally extinct, they are not eligible for expedited immigration to Israel under the Law of Return unless they explicitly convert.

Today, some descendants of Jews still live in the Han Chinese and population. Some of them, as well as international Jewish communities, are beginning to revive their interest in this heritage. This is especially important in modern China because belonging to any minority group includes a variety of benefits including and easier admission standards to tertiary education.

The study of Judaism in China has been, like other Western religions, a subject of interest to some Westerners, and has achieved moderate success compared to other western studies in China.

History

It has been asserted by some that the Jews that have historically resided in various places in China originated with the Lost Ten Tribes of the exiled ancient Kingdom of Israel who relocated to the areas of present-day China. Traces of some ancient have been observed in some places.

One well-known group was the Kaifeng Jews, who are purported to have traveled from Persia to India during the mid-Han Dynasty and later migrated from the Muslim-inhabited regions of northwestern China to Henan province during the early Northern Song Dynasty .

Two of the refer to a written on the back of Song Dynasty General Yue Fei. The tattoo, which reads ''jǐn zhōng bào guó'' , first appeared in a section of the 1489 stele talking about the Jews’ “Boundless loyalty to the country and Prince”. The second appeared in a section of the 1512 stele talking about how Jewish soldiers and officers in the Chinese armies were “Boundlessly loyal to the country.” One source even claims that Israelites served as soldiers in the armies of Yue Fei..

21st century

Synagogues are found in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong today, serving both international Jews and native Jews.


In 2005, the Israeli embassy to China held their Hanukkah celebrations at the Great Wall of China .

Famous Jews in China

*
*Israel Epstein
*Sidney Rittenberg
*Jakob Rosenfeld
*Sidney Shapiro
*Ignaz Trebitsch-Lincoln
*Zhao Yingcheng

Fugu Plan

The '''''' was a scheme created in the 1930s in centered around the idea of settling Jewish refugees escaping Nazi-occupied Europe in Japan's territories on the Asian mainland to Japan's benefit. The Plan was first discussed in 1934, and solidified in 1938 at the Five Ministers' Conference, but the signing of the Tripartite Pact in 1941, along with a number of other events, prevented its full implementation.

The plotters believed that the Jews could be quite beneficial to Japan, but also quite dangerous. Therefore, the plan was named after the Japanese delicacy "fugu", a puffer-fish whose poison can kill if the dish is not prepared exactly correctly.

The Plan

At its core, the Fugu Plan was a scheme to convince thousands, if not tens of thousands, of Jews to settle in the puppet state of Manchukuo or possibly Japan-occupied Shanghai, thus gaining not only the benefit of the supposed economic prowess of the Jews but also convincing the United States, specifically , to grant their political favor and economic investment in Japan. The plan was partly based on a naive acceptance of European anti-Semitic mythology, as found for example in ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion''., but the American Jewish organizations insisted on stalwartly showing their patriotism, and giving no hint of treasonous activity.

In 1942 the Japanese government officially rescinded the decision of the Five Ministers' Conference, fully and officially removing their already near-nonexistent support for the near-extinct Fugu Plan. Nazi Colonel Josef Meisinger, chief of the Gestapo arrived in Shanghai. He attempted to convince the local Japanese authorities to "exterminate" the Jewish refugees, or to put them to work in salt mines; in short, he brought and Final Solution to Asia. The national government in Tokyo would not stand for this, and Meisinger's plans were reduced to simply the creation of what came to be known as the Shanghai ghetto: Jews in Shanghai were now forced to live in a "Designated Area for Stateless Refugees" on February 18, 1943. Jews were permitted to leave the one-square-mile area in Hongkew district, but only after procuring a pass from the Japanese official who overlooked the area. By the end of the war most of the Jews were starving. The ghetto was bombed just months before the end of the war, by planes seeking to destroy a radio transmitter within the city.

Importance

The Fugu Plan, as envisioned by Yasue, Inuzuka, and others, had failed. Those Jews who did find their way to Japan, and to Japanese-controlled China, were not brought over in especially large numbers; far fewer made the trip than had applied for visas. The Jews were not helped in any large-scale or particularly official or organized way by the national government in Tokyo. And perhaps most disappointingly for the planners, those Jews who did settle in Kobe, and then in Shanghai did next to nothing to revive or bolster the Japanese economy. These refugees who had come to Japan with literally nothing but the clothes on their back were not the wealthy and philanthropic American bankers and corporate leaders Yasue and Inuzuka had heard of, nor did they have the ability to elicit favor or aid for Japan from these men. Nevertheless, several thousand Jews were rescued from almost certain death in Nazi Europe by the policies surrounding Japan's temporary pro-Jewish attitude, and Chiune Sugihara was bestowed the honor of the Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government in 1985. In addition, the , one of the largest centers of rabbinical study today, and the only European yeshiva to survive the Holocaust, survived as a result of these events.

Chiune Sugihara

Chiune Sugihara was a diplomat, serving as Vice Consul for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania. Soon after the by the Soviet Union, he helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Most of the Jews who escaped were refugees from Poland or residents of Lithuania. Because of his actions in saving Jews from the Nazis, Sugihara was honored by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations.

Early life

Chiune Sugihara was born January 1, 1900, in , a rural area in Gifu Prefecture of the Chūbu region in Japan to a middle-class father, Yoshimizu Sugihara, and Yatsu Sugihara, a samurai-class mother. He was the second son among five boys and one girl.

In 1912, he graduated with top honors from Furuwatari School, and entered Nagoya Daigo Chugaku , a combined junior and senior high school. His father wanted him to follow in his footsteps as a physician, but he deliberately failed the entrance exam by writing only his name on the exam papers. Instead, he entered Waseda University in 1918 and majored in English literature. In 1919, he passed the Foreign Ministry Scholarship exam. The Japanese Foreign Ministry recruited him and assigned him to Harbin, China, where he also studied the and languages and later became an expert in Russian affairs.

Manchurian Foreign Office

When Sugihara served in the Manchurian Foreign Office, he took part in the negotiations with the Soviet Union about the . He quit his post as Deputy Foreign Minister in Manchuria in protest over Japanese mistreatment of the local Chinese. While in Harbin, he converted to and married a woman named Klaudia. They divorced in 1935, before he returned to Japan, where he married Yukiko Kikuchi, who became Yukiko Sugihara after the marriage; they had four sons. Unfortunately, their third son, Haruki, died. Chiune Sugihara also served in the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as a translator for the Japanese legation in Helsinki, Finland.

Lithuania

In 1939, he became a vice-consul of the Japanese Consulate in Kaunas, Lithuania. His other duty was to report on Soviet and German troop movements.

Sugihara is said to have cooperated with Polish intelligence, as a part of bigger Japanese-Polish cooperative plan. Details remain sketchy, but after the Soviet takeover of Lithuania in 1940, many Jewish refugees from Poland as well as Lithuanian Jews tried to acquire exit visas. Without the visas, it was dangerous to travel and impossible to find countries willing to issue them. Hundreds of refugees came to the Japanese consulate in Kaunas, trying to get a visa to Japan. The consul Jan Zwartendijk had provided some of them with an official third destination to Cura?ao, a Caribbean island and Dutch colony that required no entry visa, or . At the time, the Japanese government required that visas be issued only to those who had gone through appropriate immigration procedures and had enough funds. Most of the refugees did not fulfill these criteria. Sugihara dutifully contacted the Japanese Foreign Ministry three times for instructions. Each time, the Ministry responded that anybody granted a visa should have a visa to a third destination to exit Japan, with no exceptions.

From July 31 to August 28, 1940, Sugihara began to grant visas on his own initiative, after consulting with his family. Many times he ignored the requirements and arranged the Jews with a ten-day visa to transit through Japan, in direct violation of his orders. Given his inferior post and the culture of the Japanese Foreign Service bureaucracy, this was an extraordinary act of disobedience. He spoke to Soviet officials who agreed to let the Jews travel through the country via the Trans-Siberian railway at five times the standard ticket price.

Sugihara continued to hand-write visas until September 4, when he had to leave his post before the consulate was closed. By that time he had granted thousands of visas to Jews, many of them heads of household who could take their families with them. According to witnesses, he was still writing visas while in transit in hotel and after boarding the train, throwing visas into the crowd of desperate refugees out the train's window even as the train pulled out. Sugihara himself wondered about official reaction to the thousands of visas he issued. Many years later, he recalled, "No one ever said anything about it. I remember thinking that they probably didn't realize how many I actually issued."

The total number of Jews saved by Sugihara is in dispute, ranging from 6000 to 10,000; most likely, it was somewhere in the middle; family visas—which allowed several people to travel on one visa—were also issued, which would account for the much higher figure. Polish intelligence produced some false visas. Sugihara's widow and eldest son estimate that he saved 6,000 Jews from certain death, whereas Levine thinks it was far higher at around 10,000. According to Hillel Levine's 1996 biography of Sugihara, ''In Search of Sugihara'', the Japanese diplomat issued 3,400 transit visas to the Jews. Levine reports from his research of official Japanese foreign ministry documents entitled "Miscellaneous Documents Regarding Ethnic Issues: Jewish Affairs,' vol.10, 1940 Diplomatic Record Office, Japanese Foreign Ministry, Tokyo", that he discovered one list alone of "''2,139 names, largely of Poles--both Jews and non-Jews--who received visas between July 9 and August 31, 1940...It is far from complete; many who received visas from Sugihara, including children, are not on it. By statistical extrapolation, we can estimate that he helped as many as ten thousand escape; those who actually survived are probably no more than half that number''." Indeed, some Jews who received Sugihara visas failed to leave Lithuania in time and were later captured by the Germans who invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 and perished in the Holocaust.

Levine discovered two documents from a Japanese foreign office file: the first aforementioned document is a February 5, 1941 diplomatic note from Chiune Sugihara to Japan's then Foreign Minister Yōsuke Matsuoka in which Sugihara stated he issued 1,500 out of 2,132 transit visas to Jews and Poles; however, since almost all the names of the 2,132 people were not Lithuanian at all, this would imply that most of the visas were given to Polish Jews instead. Levine then notes that another document from the same foreign office file "indicates an additional 3,448 visas were issued in Kovno for a total of 5,580 visas" which were likely given to Jews desperate to flee Lithuania for safety in Japan or Japanese occupied China. Moreover, there were also "some Jesuits in Vilna who were issuing Sugihara visas with seals that he had left behind and did not destroy, long after the Japanese diplomat had departed" which means that some Jews could have escaped Europe with forged visas issued under Sugihara's name.

Many refugees used their visas to travel across the Soviet Union to Vladivostok and then by boat to Kobe, Japan, where there was a Russian Jewish community. Polish ambassador in Tokyo, Tadeusz Romer, organised limited help for them. From there, 1,000 departed to other destinations such as the United States and the British Mandate of Palestine. The remaining number of Sugihara/Zwartendijk survivors stayed in Japan until they were deported to Japanese-held Shanghai, where there was already a large Jewish community. Others took a more southerly route through Korea directly to Shanghai without passing through Japan. A group of thirty "Jakub Goldberg" arrived one day to Tsuruga but were returned to Russian Nakhodka. Most of the around 20,000 Jews survived the Holocaust in the Shanghai ghetto until the Japanese surrender in 1945.

Despite German pressure for the Japanese government to either hand over or kill the Jewish refugees, the government protected the group. In '''' , offered one hypothesis: it was in gratitude for a $196 million loan that a Jewish banker from New York, Jacob Schiff, had given to Japan; the funds helped them to victory in the . A broader hypothesis, which also motivated the 1930s scheme, involved the benefit of the supposed economic prowess to Jews , which was desirable to the Japanese empire. Finally, Jewish leaders pointed out that the Nazi ideal excluded "the yellow", and asserted that like the Japanese, the Jews were from Asia too.

Resignation

Sugihara served as a Consulate General in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1941 in K?nigsberg and in legation in Bucharest, Romania. When Russian troops entered Romania, Soviet troops imprisoned Sugihara and his family in a POW camp for eighteen months. They were released in 1946 and returned to Japan through the Soviet Union via the Trans-Siberian railroad and Nakhodka port.

In 1947, the Japanese foreign office asked him to resign, nominally due to downsizing. Some sources, including his wife Yukiko Sugihara, have said that the Foreign Ministry told Sugihara he was dismissed because of "that incident" in Lithuania.

In October 1991, the ministry told Sugihara's family that Sugihara's resignation was part of the ministry's shakeup in personnel shortly after the end of the war. The Foreign Ministry issued a position paper on March 24, 2006, that there was no evidence the Ministry imposed disciplinary action on Sugihara. The ministry said that Sugihara was one of many diplomats to resign voluntarily, but that it was "difficult to confirm" the details of his individual resignation. The ministry praised Sugihara's conduct in the report, calling it a "courageous and humanitarian decision."

Later life

Sugihara settled in Fujisawa in Kanagawa prefecture. He began to work for an export company as General Manager of U.S. Military Post Exchange. Utilizing his command of the Russian language, Sugihara went on to work and live a low-key existence in the Soviet Union for sixteen years, while his family stayed in Japan.

In 1968, Jehoshua Nishri, an economic attache to the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo and one of the Sugihara beneficiaries, finally located and contacted him. Nishri had been a Polish teen in 1940. The next year Sugihara visited Israel and was greeted by the Israeli government. Sugihara beneficiaries began to lobby for inclusion in the Yad Vashem memorial.

In 1985, Chiune Sugihara was granted the honor of the Righteous Among the Nations by the government of Israel. Sugihara was too ill to travel to Israel, so his wife and son accepted the honor on his behalf. Sugihara and his descendants were given perpetual Israeli citizenship.

In that year, 45 years after the Soviet invasion of Lithuania, he was asked his reasons for issuing visas to the Jews. Sugihara gave two reasons: one, that these refugees were human beings, and the other, that they simply needed help. As Sugihara stated in a conversation with a visitor to his home near Tokyo Bay that year:


When asked why he risked his career to save other people, he quoted an old samurai saying, "Even a hunter cannot kill a bird which flies to him for refuge."

Sugihara died the following year, on July 31, 1986. In spite of the publicity given him in Israel and other nations, he remained virtually unknown in his home country. Only when a large Jewish delegation from around the world, including the Israeli ambassador to Japan, showed up at his funeral did his neighbours find out what he had done.

Legacy and honors

Sugihara Street in Kaunas and Vilnius, Lithuania, and the asteroid 25893 Sugihara are named after him. The Chiune Sugihara Memorial in the town of Yaotsu was built by the people of the town in his honor. The Sugihara house-museum in Kaunas, Lithuania. Conservative synagogue Temple Emeth, in Chestnut Hill , Massachusetts, has built a "Sugihara Memorial Garden" and holds an Annual Sugihara Memorial Concert.

Aliases

Sugihara is also known as Sempo Sugiwara and Chiune Sempo Sugihara. Sugiwara Sempo was a pseudonym that he adopted when he worked in the Soviet Union from 1960 to 1975 to prevent the Soviets from identifying him as the Japanese diplomat who in 1932 outsmarted them and obtained a very good deal for Japan when it purchased the Northern Manchurian Railroad. Sempo is not a distinct name but another way of reading the 千畝 for Chiune. Similarly, ''sugiwara'' is an alternative pronunciation of 杉原, his family name. Sempo was not his middle name, as Japanese names do not have middle names.

Biographies

* A Japanese TV station in Japan made a documentary film about Chiune Sugihara. This film was shot in Kaunas, at the place of the former embassy of Japan.
* '''' from PBS shares details of Sugihara and his family and the fascinating relationship between the Jews and the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s. The website includes a timeline of Sugihara's life, video previews, exclusive interviews, and lesson plans for teachers.
* On October 11, 2005, Yomiuri TV aired a two-hour-long drama entitled ''Visas for Life'' about Sugihara, based on his wife's book. The of the drama is very comprehensive, but only available in Japanese. It aired on Hawaii station KIKU-TV titled as ''6,000 Visas for Life'' as part of special New Year's programming on January 13, 2007.
* Chris Tashima and Chris Donahue made a film about Sugihara in 1997, entitling it ''Visas and Virtue'', which won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film.
* Japan's largest film company, Nippon Animation, is producing an animated film on Chiune Sugihara. The film was specially animated for television stations in Japan and around the world. The plan is to market the film in 2008, marking sixty years since diplomatic relations were established between Israel and Japan. The Japanese company asked Israel's ambassador to Japan, Eli Cohen, to help in making the film.

Partial list of people helped by Sugihara

*Leaders and students of the , Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim relocated to Otwock, Poland and elsewhere.
*, former National Vice-President of the Zionist Organization of America and current member of the National Executive of the ZOA. Also serves as a member of the Middle East Committee and the Holocaust Committee of Jewish Community Relations Council and former Vice-President/board member of the Jewish Cemetery Association of Massachusetts. One of several featured speakers at the " in honor of Sugihara in 2000, in Japan.
*Jehoshua Nishri, economic attache to the Israeli Embassy in Tokyo
*Zerach Warhaftig
*Robert Lewin
*Leo Melamed
* Members of Szpiro & Jaglom families Bia?ystok
*John G. Stoessinger, professor of diplomacy at the University of San Diego
*George Zames, control theorist

Fiction

In the novel ''The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay'' by Michael Chabon, it is implied that the protagonist Josef Kavalier receives visas from Sugihara and his ally Jan Zwartendijk. Though the novel does not mention these men by name, it describes a "Dutch consul in Kovno in league with a Japanese official who would grant rights of transit" .