Kindhearted U.S. Jews kept us alive after we fled to Shanghai

I have never met my hero and don't even know his name. Yet he and many like him (and her) have reached deep into their pockets to save my family and numerous others from starvation during 1939 to 1947.

I am one of the Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi persecution and fled Europe, ending up in Shanghai. Our story is not well known and, compared with the horrendous enormity of the Holocaust, it may appear today not all that significant. But the generosity of American Jewry made a big difference to the 20,000 displaced persons suffering through eight years of painful exile under unaccustomed and hostile conditions.

The hot, humid summers and bone-chilling winters were especially hard on our parents. Father, who had worked hard all his life in our Austrian country store, was now spending his days in hopeless, idle boredom and my sister and I never earned enough to support our family. This occurred during World War II and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee somehow managed to transfer funds to us in spite of the Japanese military occupation under which we were living.

In the final years of the war the Jewish refugees were restricted to the Hongkew Ghetto and our anonymous American benefactors kept giving and giving to house and feed us, year after year. Those kindhearted philanthropists were true heroes, one and all.