June 9




CHINA:

Commemorating Shanghais Jewish community

Database expected to hold information on 30,000 Jews living in Shanghai
during WW II is being created in joint effort between Israeli, Chinese
governments


Shanghai's Jewish community celebrated the launch Friday of a database
that will document the stories of the thousands of refugees who found a
safe haven in China's commercial capital during World War II.

So far the database lists the names of about 600 of the 30,000 Jews who
fled to Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s to escape Nazi death camps and
other horrors of the Holocaust.

The database, supported by the Israeli and Chinese governments, is housed
in a museum in the city's former Ohel Moshe Synagogue.

"The independent state of Israel emerged out of the ashes of the Holocaust
and we have the obligation to document and to keep the stories of the past
alive for future

generations," Israeli Consul General Uri Gutman told local and foreign
dignitaries at the event.

Donations from Israeli companies helped finance the project, which is just
beginning to take shape. Those developing it have names and some other
information on some 10,000 refugees.

"We hope this database will be further supplemented by all sources from
around the world," Said Shen Xiaoning, a Shanghai vice mayor.

Shanghai was a major trading center long before the war and had a
well-established Jewish community, making it a natural destination for
many of those fleeing persecution in Europe. And while in many cases Jews
were denied entrance to other countries, China was relatively open to
refugees.

As the Japanese invaded and occupied many regions of China during the war,
growing numbers of Jews migrated to Shanghai.

Despite its willingness to take in Jews, the thriving refugee community in
Shanghai was forced into a teeming riverside ghetto in the city's Hongkou
district during the Japanese occupation.

It gradually dwindled after the 1949 communist revolution, though many
refugees remained for years before leaving for the West or for the
then-British colony of Hong Kong.

Among the mostly European Jews who found refuge in Shanghai was Jakob
Rosenfeld, an Austrian-trained doctor who was deported to Dachau
concentration camp and then to Buchenwald, both in Germany. In 1939, he
was released and fled to China.

The Chinese honor Rosenfeld, who died in 1952 while visiting Israel, for
his later role as a field doctor for the Chinese Red Army.

'Helping keep story alive'

Margaret Friga, a niece of Rosenfeld's from Miami, Florida, who attended
Friday's celebration and a former history teacher - said the database
would be an important historical accomplishment.

"Helping keep the story alive for my children and my grandchildren, that's
what's important," Friga said.

As Shanghai has regained its status as an international commercial center,
the growing Jewish expatriate community has won support from local
officials for restoring some synagogues and preserving the Hongkou ghetto
as a historic district.

After a painstaking refurbishment, Ohel Moshe opened its doors last month
for its first wedding in about 60 years.

The database is part of a three-phase project that included renovating a
neighborhood senior center and donating equipment to a social welfare
facility.

(source: Jewish World)




POLAND:
Holocaust survivors return to Poland to rebuild Jewish life


Ghetto survivors return to Poland as philanthropists in attempt to revive
former communities. 'Someone needed to do it and the question is if not
now, when,' they say

They spent their childhoods in the rich, layered Jewish life of prewar
Poland, then survived Hitler's mission to wipe out European Jewry in the
ghettos and gas chambers of occupied Europe.

Now, men such as Tad Taube, Sigmund Rolat and Severyn Ashkenazy have
returned to Poland as philanthropists after making fortunes in the United
States to nurture a grass-roots revival of Jewish life in their homeland.

Few know that Israelis own the exquisite Warsaw Hilton Hotel, inaugurated
a day after Holocaust Memorial Day right next to where the Warsaw ghetto
used to be. How do the entrepreneurs view Jewish enterprises in the Warsaw
valley of death? What do Poles and Holocaust survivors have to say about
that?

And while some Jews in America and elsewhere cannot comprehend why the
philanthropists choose to return to a land where their ancestors suffered
such pain and loss, members of Poland's Jewish community praise the help
as crucial to the small renaissance now under way.

"What the philanthropists have done - along with the importance of the
material donation - is also empowered us, encouraged us, let us know we're
not alone," Said Poland's Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, an Orthodox
leader from New York. "And that cannot be underestimated."

Suppressing one's identity

Following Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939, about 3 million
Polish Jews were murdered in Nazi-run death camps in occupied Poland. Of
those who survived, many later fled in reaction to anti-Semitic violence
or repression under communism, which eventually fell in 1989.

Of those who remained, many suppressed their identities and intermarried
with the Roman Catholic majority, making it difficult to say how many Jews
live in this country of 38 million today. However, some estimates put the
numbers of people with some Jewish ancestry at between 10,000 and 30,000.

Taube, Rolat and Ashkenazy say Polish Jews, who are often struggling
economically, need help in rebuilding a community that hopes to reclaim
its place in a country where Jews lived and prospered for a thousand
years.

"The population doesn't have a reasonable chance if there aren't
institutions in place to support them," Says Taube, who left Poland weeks
before Hitler's tanks rolled across the border in their Blitzkrieg attack
that started World War II.

And so, foreign donors have stepped in to fill the void, funding
everything from Hebrew classes and rabbis to big ticket items like the
annual Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow and Warsaw's landmark Museum of
the History of Polish Jews, due to open in 2009.

Ronald S. Lauder, the US cosmetics heir, was among the first foreign
philanthropists to take an interest in rebuilding Jewish life in Poland
and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. More recently, as the indigenous
Jewish community has grown in this young democracy, more philanthropists
have begun to help.

Rebuilding Jewish life

Since launching operations in Poland more than three years ago, Taube's
foundation has donated some $2 million annually and encouraged other
donors to contribute another $8 million to help fund rabbis, educational
programs, summer camps, day schools, as well as the Krakow festival and
the Warsaw museum.

Taube says he wants to focus on Poland's living Jews, not on those wiped
out in the Holocaust. "The preoccupation of Jews in most of the Diaspora
is of Poland as a cemetery for Jews," He said during a recent visit to
Warsaw. But his philanthropy efforts are "About Jewish life in Poland, not
Jewish death."

Rolat, who closely cooperates with Taube and is involved in a host of
similar projects, has also worked extensively in his hometown of
Czestochowa to put its tiny surviving Jewish community back on its feet.

And there are signs of renewed vigor - and complexity - in Jewish life
across Poland. Ashkenazy survived the war in an underground bunker in the
Polish city of Tarnopol, in what is now Ukraine.

After the war he moved to France before settling in the United States
where he, like Taube, made his fortune in real estate. Ashkenazy got
involved in Poland in 1999, when he helped launch Beit Warszawa, Poland's
first Progressive, or Reform, community since World War II.

Beit Warszawa, which started as a handful of foreigners meeting in their
homes, now has some 200 active members, and its own center for Sabbath
services, meals, bar mitzvahs and other events.

Rabbi Burt Schuman arrived last year, becoming the country's first
full-time Progressive rabbi since the Holocaust, and a second rabbi
started this year, Tanya Segal, a Russian-born Israeli who is the
country's first permanent woman rabbi.

'Someone needed to do it'

"Someone needed to do it, and the perennial question is if not me, who,
and if not now, when," Ashkenazy says. "It needed to be done. It still
needs to be done. It's in its infancy, progressing, taking roots. We need
support, we need help."

Rolat, who worked as a slave laborer in camps near his hometown of
Czestochowa during the war, left Europe for the US in 1948 as the sole
survivor of his family. He acquired his wealth running international
finance companies.

He has helped fund Warsaw rabbis, book publishing and educational programs
to promote Jewish culture in Polish schools, but has also spent great
effort to revive the Jewish community in his native Czestochowa. He is
also involved in efforts to promote Polish-Jewish relations.

All three men speak openly of their love for Poland, and stress that the
country was a true home for Jews for a millennium, where their people
achieved great things in the arts, sciences and politics.

"Poland really was more than just a country where Jews took refuge," Rolat
said in Warsaw. "Poland was really our home."

(source: Jewish World)