Photos exhibited at the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Memorial in January. (PHOTO PROVIDED BY WANG GANG / CHINA DAILY)

In 1939 Miriam Brookfield's life in Germany took an unexpected turn. The 14-year-old's father was arrested by Nazi authorities, and he was told he would be released only if he presented emigration documents proving he and his family were leaving the country.

"If we could leave Germany within the next two weeks or something like that, then they wouldn't have to put him in a concentration camp," Brookfield told China Daily recently. "They would let him go."

Her mother found out about a steamship departing for Shanghai and bought tickets for the family. Most countries were limiting Jewish migration or had closed their doors completely, and the free port of Shanghai became a haven for nearly 20,000 Jews fleeing the persecution in Germany that would later turn into the horrors of the Holocaust.

"It saved my life," Brookfield, now 97, says. "It gave me experiences that I'll never forget."

The plight of many Shanghai refugees such as Brookfield's were a central part of an exhibition titled "Hidden History: Recounting the Shanghai Jewish Story", in the Holocaust Museum LA that ran from April until the end of August.

"We called the exhibition hidden history, because we felt this was an important story to tell that needed to be uncovered, needed to be told," says Jordanna Gessler, vice-president of education and exhibits at the museum, which calls itself the oldest such museum in the United States.

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The exhibition pieced together a compelling tale of struggle and survival of resettled Jews in Shanghai during World War II. It explored a chapter in history that is little known to Jews and non-Jews in the US, Gessler says.

"Most people who learn about the Holocaust think about it being in Europe, think about Poland, they think about Germany," says Gessler, who curated the exhibition. "So we felt that this history was hidden, that it was uncovered, that people didn't know it."

Although the exhibition has ended, it drew so much public interest that the museum decided to make it "virtual and streaming", she says, putting up web pages dedicated to the exhibition so people can view many of the artifacts.

As a result of inquiries from other museums, staff are also redesigning the exhibition so it can be put on display in other places.

Ron Klinger, a Jewish descendent, visits an exhibition of the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Memorial with his family in 2015. (PHOTO PROVIDED BY GAO ERQIANG / CHINA DAILY）

Diplomat's help

Some artifacts in the exhibition will be integrated into the permanent collections at Holocaust Museum LA, among them a copy of the diplomatic passport of Ho Feng Shan, whose information will be added to an exhibition featuring individuals worldwide who helped rescue Jewish lives.

The annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in March 1938 resulted in a wave of violent prosecution against Jews, many of whom were desperate to flee the country. However, the Nazis required those who wanted to leave to have visas allowing them entry to another country or outbound tickets on a ship.

Ho was the Chinese consul general in Vienna, and he saved thousands of Jews by issuing 400-500 visas a month in 1938 and 1939, against the orders of his superior.

"He was not of the Jewish faith, but instead he used his position," Gessler says. "He used who he was to help people who needed help."

To his daughter Ho Manli, Ho could be described as a 20th century Zhuge Liang, a Chinese statesman and military strategist of the Three Kingdoms period (220-280), drawing on his wisdom and strategic prowess to help many Jews.

"My father's generation had witnessed the humiliation that China had suffered under foreign imperialism and was determined not to allow that to continue," she says. "As a result, he was particularly sensitive to the persecution of any peoples."

When Japan invaded China in 1937 almost all mainland ports fell under Japanese control. The only exception was Shanghai, because none of the foreign authorities represented in the city had the power to exercise passport controls.

The Western powers also did not want Japan, an ally of Nazi-Germany, to have control of the harbor, concerned that this would impede access to the city.

Armed with these, even imprisoned relatives and those already deported to concentration camps were allowed to leave. The visas provided the means for Jews to travel to Shanghai or other countries under the pretext of transiting through them on their way to the city, she says.

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Among the visa recipients was Eric Goldstaub, who visited every consulate in Vienna before securing 20 visas for members of his immediate and extended family at the Chinese consulate. Goldstaub stayed in Shanghai until 1949 and settled permanently in Canada, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Mike Blumenthal, US Secretary of the Treasury under Jimmy Carter, US president from 1977 to 1981, was another. He fled to Shanghai with his family as a 13-year-old in 1939, shortly before World War II broke out.

Others, such as the parents of Israel Singer, former secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress, used the Shanghai visa to travel to other destinations.

"He actually shared the information that Shanghai was a place where they could go, because most of the Austrian Jews didn't know about Shanghai at that time," Gessler says of Ho, who died aged 96 in 1997.

Ho's humanitarian efforts also put Shanghai on the radar of German Jews who could not go to China's consulate general in Vienna for the visas.

Visitors to an exhibition of the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Memorial in 2017. The exhibition was about Anne Frank, who hid in a basement in Amsterdam during World War II. (PHOTO PROVIDED BY GAO ERQIANG / CHINA DAILY）

Decision of relocation

Among them were Brookfield and her family. They decided to relocate to Shanghai after finding out that no visas were required for entry. Only proof of vaccinations for cholera and typhoid were needed, Brookfield says.

After showing the German officers the boat tickets, her entire family was taken to a train station and put in the sealed compartment of a train bound for Switzerland.

All three of them, Brookfield's parents and herself, were freed after passing Switzerland's borders. They continued their journey to Italy, where they boarded a ship to Shanghai.

"We were (the last to be) able to get… out of Germany when they allowed Jews to go to China, because they stopped that after that," Brookfield said.

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Soon after the family left, World War II broke out. Borders were closed and ships stopped taking passengers. The war lasted six years, but Brookfield ended up living in China for eight years.

Throughout their time in Shanghai the family stayed in a refugee camp in Hongkou district, where food and electricity were in short supply, malnutrition was common and diseases were rampant. "Everything was new and different and scary," she says.

To make things worse, the Nazis confiscated most of the family's assets in Germany and took away "everything that was of value", even silverware and spoons.

Sara Imas, whose ancestors were Jewish refugees in Shanghai during World War II, walks near the statue "Song of survivors "during an exhibition in Shanghai in January. (PHOTO PROVIDED BY GAO ERQIANG / CHINA DAILY）

Rough memories

"It was very rough, rough. You really had to depend on the charity organizations to feed you," Brookfield says.

One of the refugees from Germany was a principal from a school, and she set up a school right away. Brookfield studied there for 18 months until Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The Japanese arrested British and Iranian Jews who financed the school, shutting the entire institution down, she says

By the time the school closed, Brookfield was 16. She was searching for small jobs somewhere "to make a few pennies" for her family. However, because Shanghai was under Japanese occupation, the rules "changed from time to time", she says.

While working part-time for a company that dyed cotton, Brookfield says, she was asked to deliver white cotton for dyeing. A group of Japanese soldiers marching in the street spotted her and arrested her.

She was taken to the back of a building and lined up against the wall as the soldiers stood there with their rifles pointed at her, she says.

"They kept aiming as if they were going to pull the trigger, and then they didn't. They started to laugh. They had fun watching me being so scared."

This went on for some time, until Brookfield was taken back to the building to meet a Japanese man who spoke English. He treated her to breakfast and explained that she had been arrested for selling the white cotton, which was confiscated to be used on injured soldiers, she says.

"Whether that was true or not, I wouldn't know."

She was released after signing a document promising not to sell any more white cotton, she says.

She recalls the hard working, but poor Chinese locals in Hongkou district. For them, living conditions were just as bad, if not worse, than those of the Jews. They were oppressed by the Japanese and often had to fight disease and hunger.

Although Brookfield says she did not have many dealings with locals due in part to the language barrier, she has never forgotten the city that unconditionally offered her family sanctuary, at a time when they could go nowhere else.

Brookfield, who now lives in Whittier, California, has visited China four times with her husband. Their journeys took them to Shanghai, Hong Kong and to a Yangtze River cruise.

Visitors stopped to examine artifacts on display in Holocaust Museum LA's "Hidden History: Recounting the Shanghai Jewish Story" exhibition on Aug 27. (PHOTO PROVIDED BY LIU YINMENG / CHINA DAILY)

Deep love

Chinese food is one of her favorite cuisines, she says, and she gravitates to Chinese people as friends.

"I have a deep love for Shanghai of China because it saved my family's life."

Like Brookfield, James Westheimer's late mother picked up habits while living as a Jewish refugee in Shanghai that are reminiscences of her time in China.

"She could speak to 10 (in Chinese)," he laughs, remembering fondly the "Chinese dishes" that his mother, whose maiden name was Salomon, used to prepare for her family in the US.

"She learned a little bit (of Chinese). She claimed she cooked some Chinese meals, which really weren't."

Susan Salomon was born in 1921. In late 1939, when she was 18, Salomon migrated with her family from Berlin to Shanghai, where she stayed until 1947, Westheimer says.

By the time the family left Germany, ships were no longer taking passengers, so the family was split in half on their journey to Shanghai. Salomon's father and sister traveled by boat, and she and her mother went by the trans-Siberian railway that took them across the Soviet Union, and eventually the family met up in Shanghai, Westheimer says.

During their first year there the family enjoyed some freedom to move around the city. However, after the Japanese occupied all of Shanghai in 1941, refugees were confined to Hongkou district, with significantly reduced movement and interactions with locals, he says.

"My mom did (interact with the locals) a little bit and we asked about that. But most of the time they were confined."

Westheimer's mother, who would have turned 101 in September, eventually moved to the US and married his father, a German Jew whose family had immigrated to the US in earlier years.

On a sunny day on Aug 27 Westheimer, a resident of San Diego, stopped by the Holocaust Museum LA exhibition on his way to visit his sister in Los Angeles. He planned to donate some of his mother's personal artifacts to the museum.

"Everybody says this was a secret, but it wasn't a secret to me," he says. "I've grown up with it."

Gessler, the exhibition's curator, said it is inspiring to know that different individuals worked hard to save strangers' lives.

She pointed to a tallit bag, a Jewish prayer shawl, on display in the exhibition. It was woven using silk. It is embroidered with plum blossoms, a Chinese symbol representing resilience, Gessler says.

"Showing this merger of cultures and influence of cultures was something that was really exciting for me, because I think learning about different histories and cultures can really strengthen the community."

An estimated 70-85 million people, or 3 percent of the world's population in 1940, perished during World War II. Many people also lost their homes, and in Europe alone about 55 million people were displaced.

Many important pieces of this period have social relevance to today, Gessler says.

"The refugee crisis, the fact that borders were closed to Jews, the fact that Shanghai became the sanctuary for nearly 20,000 Jews, saving their lives."

There has been "an increase in hatred, in identity-based violence in people ignoring the plight of others" in recent years, she says.

"And unfortunately, that is something we see when we study the Holocaust. But in the face of that we also see in this story specifically examples of people doing kind actions."