Thoughtful, serious 'Shanghai Ghetto'

By Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times

•	'Shanghai Ghetto' Not rated 95 minutes

"Shanghai Ghetto" is a serious and thoughtful documentary look at how some 20,000 European Jews, first from Germany and then from Eastern Europe, came to call the commercial center of China home for the duration of the war.

Using archival footage, historians' comments, moving interviews with articulate survivors, and clandestine footage of those now-aged refugees returning to Shanghai, filmmakers Dana Janklowicz-Mann (whose father is one of those interviewed, and whose brother is Gilad Janklowicz of the filmed-in-Hawai'i "Bodies in Motion" TV show and fitness videos) and Amir Mann explore one of the lesser-known corners of Holocaust history.

Several accidents of fate made it possible for Shanghai to serve as a refuge, chief among them the fact that it was conquered by Japan in 1937, leading to a complex situation in which no country was responsible for checking new arrivals for visas.

Once in Shanghai, the Jews in their heavy European clothing found themselves in an alien environment where "the streets smelled not like Chanel No. 5." Still, helped by the Chinese, they were able to create a self-sufficient society, complete with cafés, sports clubs and newspapers, that lasted until the Japanese confined them to an actual ghetto as the war with the United States intensified.

The greatest shock for these people, however, came when the conflict ended.

"They concentrated on the misery of life in Shanghai," one historian says, only to find out "they were living in paradise compared to what happened to their brethren in Europe."