Chinese dolls

The Jews escaping to Shanghai settled down here, and their lives gradually started to bustle with vitality; they set up families here and had their children. The Jews carrying two Chinese babies and wearing Chinese costume in the figure were native Shanghai people, and they had wonderful childhoods here and they had strong home affection on this land in which blood is thicker than water. Several years later, they got back to Shanghai and soulfully told such a story: they went back to Europe in 1946, and once they got off the ship their parents told them that: “in case that there are people massacring the Jews in the future, you quickly escape to Shanghai and it is your birthplace.”

Oil painting, Chinese Dolls (Photo Credit: CC – BY Zhang Ping, Chinese Jewish Cultural Foundation)

Noemi and Dagmar with Chinese dolls and dressed in Chinese clothes. Their parents came to Shanghai from Germany as Jewish refugees (Photo Credit: CC – BY Noemi Dalidakis, Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum)

Special thanks to Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum for providing the sources of literature and photo on this topic. Further contact with Chinese Jewish Cultural Foundation (CJCF) via email: postmaster@cjcf.org.cn‍.