By Cailin Acosta in San Diego
For Jewish refugees fleeing Europe during and after World War II, Shanghai became both a refuge and a place of uncertainty. But not every Jewish family experienced Shanghai in the same way.
Tifereth Israel Synagogue Sisterhood members Debbie Mishek and Ella Cashuk recently shared their families’ remarkable journeys from Europe to China, Israel and eventually the United States at the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum. Their stories unfolded side by side, revealing two dramatically different experiences of Jewish life in Shanghai during the years surrounding World War II.
Mishek’s family arrived in Shanghai as refugees from Nazi persecution. Cashuk’s family belonged to the established Russian Jewish community and lived a life of considerable comfort and privilege until political upheaval forced them to leave.
Mishek described her mother’s childhood in Austria and the family’s eventual escape from Nazi rule. After losing their status and access to passports, the family received temporary certificates from the Austrian consulate in lieu of passports.
They first went to Hong Kong, then under British rule, before continuing to Shanghai. Initially, they lived in the French Concession, where conditions were relatively comfortable. That changed when the family was ordered to move to Hangchou, an impoverished area that became known as the Shanghai ghetto.
After the Japanese occupation, restrictions increased. Residents needed special passes to leave the designated area. Mishek displayed her mother’s Shanghai foreign-resident certificates and the passes that allowed her mother to attend school and her grandfather to travel to work. Obtaining those passes was difficult. “They had to stand in line for days to get these passes,” she recalled.
The family learned to navigate the moods of the Japanese guards. Children were sometimes sent to the front of the line because the guards tended to respond more favorably to them. Although the passes were not yellow stars, they clearly identified the Jewish residents and restricted their movements.
Despite the hardships, Mishek’s mother continued her education and became involved with the Shanghai Youth Association. She attended St. John’s University and, according to Mishek, maintained a lively social life even under difficult circumstances.
A family story captures something of her personality. When Mishek’s mother was invited to a school dance, she accepted invitations from several young men, giving each a different pickup time. Unfortunately, all three arrived at the same time. Realizing what had happened, they left, and she never made it to the dance.
Behind such memories was the much harsher reality of life in the ghetto: limited food, poor living conditions, registration requirements and constant uncertainty. Mishek described her grandfather as a quiet, humble man. “He did what he had to do to support his family and to survive,” she said.
Her grandfather repeatedly attempted to secure permission for the family to emigrate to the United States. Eventually, a brother living in New York helped make their immigration possible. Mishek’s mother arrived in the United States in 1948 after a two-week voyage from Shanghai. Mishek’s grandparents followed later.
The family preserved extensive documentation of the immigration process, including medical and mental-health certifications, police reports and immigration papers. One document from the American Joint Distribution Committee confirmed that the family’s passage from Shanghai to San Francisco had been paid for.
Mishek emphasized that her grandparents paid their own way, despite being poor, rather than relying on free transportation. Her mother eventually attended Adelphi University in New York and later moved to the West Coast when her parents arrived.
Cashuk’s family story was strikingly different. Her family was part of Shanghai’s large Russian Jewish community, whose members had come primarily from Russia, Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe.
Her grandfather originally went to China as an employee and eventually established an import-export business in Harbin, in Manchuria. He traveled frequently between China, Russia and Poland for business. After his brother died, his mother summoned him back to Poland. She wanted him to marry the woman who had been engaged to his brother. He fell in love with her, married her and brought her back to Harbin.
Their children were born in China, including Cashuk’s mother in Harbin. Eventually, the family moved south to Shanghai, along with much of the Russian Jewish community. Cashuk was born in Shanghai, as was her brother.
Unlike refugees who arrived fleeing Nazi persecution, her family lived comfortably in Shanghai. They resided in the French Concession and enjoyed what she described as a life of “opulence” and “luxury.” Their home included numerous servants, two governesses, one for each child, and even a rickshaw boy. The family belonged to a thriving Jewish community that included approximately 30,000 Russian Jews. There were Jewish community organizations, Hadassah groups, social clubs, charities and approximately 10 synagogues.
Cashuk’s father worked in the currency exchange business, helping travelers navigate the different currencies used throughout China. Her memories of childhood were filled with parks, parties, friends, community activities and an expansive Jewish social world. “Shanghai was really the Paris of the East,” she recalled.
Her mother was accustomed to an elegant lifestyle and enjoyed fashion. Cashuk remembered accompanying her mother to stores filled with designer clothing, including mink coats. Yet the family’s privileged life could not protect them from political change.
In 1948, as Mao Zedong and the Communist forces were gaining power in China, Cashuk’s father received a warning through his banking contacts. He returned home and told his wife that they had to leave immediately. “We either leave now, or we may never come out of the country,” Cashuk recalled him saying. The family had no visas or passports. Although two generations had been born in China, they recognized that remaining could become increasingly dangerous.
On Christmas Eve in 1948, the family boarded the last available passenger freighter. Approximately 200 families were aboard. Their journey lasted more than four months.
The ship traveled through India, Africa and South America before reaching the Mediterranean. In Italy, the passengers were not permitted to disembark. Eventually, they were told they would have to wait approximately two weeks for a ship traveling to the newly established State of Israel.
They finally arrived in Israel in the spring of 1949, more than four months after leaving Shanghai. For Cashuk, the arrival coincided with the excitement surrounding Israel’s first Independence Day. She remembered seeing people dancing in the streets, although she did not fully understand what was happening.
Israel presented an entirely different world. The family had gone from servants and luxury in Shanghai to a much more basic existence. Her mother, who had never learned to cook because servants had always prepared the family’s meals, suddenly found herself responsible for feeding the household. Cashuk recalled her mother attempting to cook with limited resources. Eventually, her father decided that the family needed to hire someone to cook.
The family remained in Israel for several years. Cashuk spoke Russian and Chinese and had to learn Hebrew. When the family later moved to the United States, she had to learn English as well. She joked that, for a time, her sentences could contain several languages, depending on whichever word came to mind first.
A relative in San Diego had arrived earlier as a student. Another relative helped sponsor the family and provided the financial bond required for their immigration. The family arrived in New York, where they saw the Statue of Liberty before traveling west. They reached San Diego on Dec. 10, 1952.
For Cashuk’s father, the transition was dramatic. In Shanghai, he had worked in banking and finance. In San Diego, he entered the tire business with his brother at a location on Fourth Avenue and Island Avenue in downtown San Diego. Cashuk still remembers the site. “Every time I go by the hotel, I think of my dad and my uncle because this was their place,” she said.
Her mother also had to adjust to a radically different life. The woman who had grown up surrounded by servants and luxury was now living in a new country and adapting to circumstances far removed from her childhood.
Cashuk eventually went into business, owning a franchise and supplying products to military ships, commissaries and exchanges.
She also maintained a humorous attitude toward her limited cooking skills. Growing up, she never needed to cook. Even after marriage, she relied heavily on family recipes and the cooking of her grandmother, who lived in San Diego and prepared Russian and Jewish dishes.
Mishek and Cashuk’s stories demonstrated how varied the Jewish experience in Shanghai could be. Mishek’s family arrived as refugees fleeing persecution and eventually lived under the restrictions of the Shanghai ghetto. Cashuk’s family belonged to an established and prosperous Jewish community and enjoyed a privileged childhood before leaving because of the political upheaval that followed the Chinese Revolution.
Both families, however, experienced repeated uprooting. Both had to leave behind homes, communities and familiar lives. Both eventually rebuilt their lives far from Shanghai. And both became part of the Jewish community in San Diego.
Their stories also illustrate the complicated history of Jewish life in Shanghai. For some, Shanghai was a place of confinement and deprivation. For others, it was home, a vibrant Jewish community filled with schools, synagogues, businesses, social organizations and families who had built new lives in China.
For the women who shared these memories, the past remains vivid not only through stories but through the places they remember, the family documents they preserve and the traditions they carried with them.
Their journeys, from Europe to Shanghai, from Shanghai to Israel and America, and ultimately to San Diego, are reminders that there was no single Jewish experience during the turbulent years of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
There were many journeys, many forms of survival and many different ways of beginning again.
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Cailin Acosta is the assistant editor of the San Diego Jewish World.