International panel to help with Shanghai Jewish refugee museum

Time:2019/11/9 13:56:25        

　　Jeo Jeff Goldblatt (right), a professor with the Queen Margaret University of Scotland, presents a book on Jewish refugees' history to Chen Jian, curator of the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, on Wednesday.

　　Global experts who have been researching on Jewish refugees have been invited to join an advisory board on Shanghai’s Jewish refugee museum to help in exhibitions, research and expansion work.

　　The International Advisory Board for the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum was established in Hongkou District on Wednesday. Twenty-seven members, including historians and descendants of the refugees, were appointed to the board.

　　The members, who come from China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Poland and Japan, are led by Yang Jiemian, the president of the board and former director of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.

　　They will help in academic research, operation and international communication of the museum as well as help in gathering resources to boost the museum's influence, said Chen Jian, curator of the museum.

　　The museum is undergoing a major expansion. The number of visitors has surged 10 times from 10,000 in the museum’s first year in 2007.

　　The museum, which is inside the historic Ohel Moishe Synagogue, is being expanded from the existing 900 square meters to over 4,000 square meters by 2020.

　　About 20,000 Jewish people from Europe fled to Shanghai and other Chinese cities between 1933 and 1941 to escape Nazi persecution during World War II.

　　"It is a great topic on war and peace, nationality and religion, the integration of the Eastern and Western cultures, as well as the connection between the past and today," said Yang.

　　"It requires many research angles and methods to reveal the truth and find inspirations from reality," he told the first meeting of the board on Wednesday.

　　Jeo Jeff Goldblatt, a professor with the Queen Margaret University in Scotland and one of the members, said: "I was determined to tell this story and in doing so, help promote Shanghai, its Jewish refugees’ museum and the Shanghai people’s example of righteousness, nobility and honor."

　　 

　　Members of the International Advisory Board for Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum share opinions at a symposium on Wednesday. 

　　Goldblatt said when he stood before the refugees’ memorial at the entrance of the museum, he was overwhelmed by emotion and wept.

　　All the board members visited the museum before the meeting and symposium on Wednesday.

　　Steve Hochstadt, a professor from Illinois, US, and a descendant of Jewish refugees in Shanghai, said he would advise how to show the history of Jews in Shanghai, and their difficulties, and the help they received from the Chinese people in the planned bigger museum.

　　Hochstadt also plans to research how the Jewish communities in Shanghai from Germany, Australia, Poland, Baghdad and Russia interacted with each other during the war.

　　His grandparents arrived in Shanghai from Vienna and lived in the city between 1939 and 1949. The US historian interviewed his grandmother in 1987 and decided to devote his research on the Jewish refugees in Shanghai.

　　"When I was a child, my home had a little Buddha and other Chinese decorations on the wall," he said. "It was very satisfying to research the history that is both personal and intellectual."

　　The museum on Changyang Road has about 700 items that were provided by some of the Jews who lived in Shanghai’s Hongkou District during World War II, along with multimedia exhibitions. The exhibits include passports, marriage certificates and personal effects like spectacles and pillboxes.

　　It has received over 400,000 visitors, including many former refugees and their families, from over 100 countries. The museum has also exhibited overseas in Germany, Israel, the US, Hungary, Australia, Switzerland and Italy.

　　 

　　Members of the International Advisory Board for the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum share opinions at a symposium on Wednesday. 

　　This report from https://www.shine.cn/news

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