Harbor from the Holocaust
Harbor from the Holocaust is the story of nearly 20,000 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II to the Chinese port city of Shanghai.
Harbor from the Holocaust will explore the extraordinary relationship of these Jews and their adopted city of Shanghai, even through the bitter years of Japanese occupation 1937-1945 and the Chinese civil war that followed. It was a relationship that produced some exceptional artists, statespeople and authors, as well as ‘ordinary’ people who survived to carry on their Jewish religion and traditions that would have otherwise been consigned to oblivion.
This documentary takes a captivating look at why Shanghai was uniquely positioned, through geo-political, cultural and historical influences, to allow this remarkable influx to happen, due to those past relations with Jews predominantly from the Middle East, the Iberian Peninsula and Russia, and because of its centuries of control by and openness to foreigners as a vigorous center of trade and commerce.