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Shanghai HIAS Lists
By Peter Nash, Sydney, Australia
The Central Information Bureau for Jewish War Sufferers in the Far East
was founded in 1917 by Sam Mason, a special delegate sent by the Hebrew
Immigrant Aid
Society, (better known as HIAS) in New York. Its function was to deal
with the problems of refugees attempting to reach America (and other
countries) from the Far East. The main office was established in Harbin,
but branches were also set up in Yokohama, Japan and Vladivostok on the
eastern seaboard of the Soviet Union.
Though the Bureau continued to deal with the problems of victims of the
1914-1918 First World War until the late 1920’s, it changed its official
name to The Far Eastern Central Information Bureau in 1923 and took its
cable address “DALJEWCIB” which became the organization’s name in
everyday use. At this time Meir Birman became involved in the Bureau’s
work and was to manage it until its dissolution some 25 years later.
Connected with HIAS since 1918, the Bureau worked in very close
co-operation with the umbrella Jewish refugee organization HICEM (the
amalgamation of HIAS, JCA and the Emigdirect organization of Berlin).
From 1938, the numbers of German, Austrian and other central European
Jews, including Polish and Czechoslovakians, requesting asylum grew
drastically. With the Japanese occupation of northern China in the early
1930’s, the situation of the Jews in Harbin deteriorated, until in
September 1939, the Bureau moved its head office to Shanghai. At that
time Shanghai remained one of the few places which refugees could enter
without a visa.
Throughout 1939 and 1940, Jews continued to flood into Shanghai, until
with the outbreak of the Pacific War some 18,000 Jewish refugees reached
Shanghai, of which about 8,000 originated from Germany and about 4,000
from Austria. At the end of the Pacific War in August 1945 the Bureau
formed part of the world-wide chain of organizations trying to trace
other Jewish refugees in order to place the Shanghai refugees in secure
countries. This work continued for a number of years after the war
ended.
In July 2001 I visited the Central Archives for the History of the
Jewish People (CAHJP) at the Hebrew University (Givat Ram) in Jerusalem.
This followed on from CAHJP’s Director, Hadassah Assouline's talk at the
London 2001 Jewish Genealogy Conference, "Indirect Genealogy :
Unexpected Genealogical Resources at the CAHJP".¹ I was particularly
interested in a collection of files acquired by the CAHJP in 1969 and
stored there ever since, although some historians, notably David
Kranzler, had studied them. The source of the files was The Far Eastern
Jewish Central Information Bureau.
The collection contains the following (file reference numbers first):
DAL216/85.4 Full list of Jewish refugees registered with HIAS, Shanghai:
1943, 280pp
DAL217/85.1 List of Jewish refugees registered with HIAS Shanghai:
07/1945, 150pp
DAL218/84.4 List with all particulars of the Jewish refugees in Shanghai
registered with HIAS in 1945 (to the end of the Pacific War) A to K:
1945, 550 pp plus DAL219/84.5 as above L to Z: 1945, 500pp
DAL220/85.5 Lists of refugees leaving Shanghai: 1946-1949, 1000pp
DAL221/85.2 Lists of refugees applying to immigrate to Australia:
21/2/47-19/5/47 150pp
Due to time constraints I only examined the two-part list with a total
of 1,050 pages. I could hardly contain my excitement when I found that
the list contains fantastic genealogical data, as follows:
- Name of applicant and his/her dependents
- Marital status (for example, divorced, widowed)
- Date and town of birth
- Nationality (at the time)
- Profession
- When and from where arrived in Shanghai and how arrived (e.g. ship’s
name, via Siberia or Kobe, etc)
- Name and exact address of relative(s) and relationship to applicant,
or friend that could sponsor immigration
On this list there are 8,528 alphabetical name order entries,
representing heads of households. So I estimate that together with
dependents, based on eighteen names on the first sheet there are
probably 16,000 to 18,000 names. Although some sheets were either
missing or hopefully only out of sequence (my parents and myself
included) this is substantially more household names than, for example,
in the Emigranten Adressbuch 1939 highlighted by CJES’s Director, Ralph
Hirsch², which as he noted does not include dependents.
Again it contains many more than the nearly 14,800 names on the
Gross-Hongkew 1943-44 list described by Hirsch as the DLJ44 list.² This
list is on a CD-ROM appended to the book Exil-Shanghai 1938-1947 also
reviewed by Hirsch in the previous Stammbaum Issue. The book was
compiled and published by the authors G. Armbrüster, M. Kohlstruck & S.
Mühlberger.
Therefore the HIAS lists will come very close to providing all the vital
genealogical data that Hirsch is still hoping to find in the missing
“detailed interviews” that Joint conducted with all refugees prior to
their onward migration from Shanghai
I obtained a copy of a single page from each of the mentioned files -
and one of them: List of Refugees leaving Shanghai - 1946 to 1949, with
1,000 pages contains under the year of emigration the family and first
names and the names of countries - presumably their destination. Another
list with 150 pages contains Jewish refugees registered with HIAS
Shanghai as at July 1945 and totals (at 100 per page) about 14-15,000
names together with year and place of birth. [The author’s AVOTAYNU
article also illustrates a facsimile copy from the 1,050 page file³]
The condition and readability of the nearly 60 year old typed sheets is
generally good although they are browned off, that is acid damaged, with
some frayed edges. At present the HIAS lists can only be searched at the
CAHJP in Jerusalem and time must be allowed to order a file from
storage, usually a day in advance of the normal hours of opening.
I also informed Valery Bazarov at HIAS New York of the existence of
these lists and he was delighted with this news. I pointed out that
conservation (photocopying on acid-free paper and micro-filming) has to
be the urgent and prime objective for this amazing collection of
genealogical data for former German, Austrian and other central European
Jews. Hadassah Assouline at CAHJP agrees and is ready to assist if
funding is provided (estimated to be about $ 2,000 for all the 2,630
pages). Bazarov has asked the HIAS executive management for a budget to
proceed but after several months (at time of going to press) this has
not eventuated.
After conservation is complete a project to make the names more easily
accessible and searchable - and to maintain privacy - needs to be
initiated and this could conceivably be along the lines of the
outstanding volunteer efforts achieved for Jewish Records Indexing
Poland.
Endnotes
1. Hadassah Assouline’s article in AVOTAYNU 17 2 (2001), 9
2. “Lists of Jewish Refugees in Shanghai as a Resource for Genealogical
Research” by Ralph Hirsch, Stammbaum Issue 20 (Winter 2002) 1
3. See the author’s article, “Shanghai HIAS Lists” in AVOTAYNU 17 4
(2001), 19 to view a sheet from the list of Jewish refugees in Shanghai
with complete genealogical data.
Peter Nash (formerly Nachemstein), is a child Holocaust survivor from
Berlin and found refuge in Shanghai from 1939 to 1949. Resident in
Sydney since then, he is a founding member of the Australian Jewish
Genealogical Society and has researched widely the available resources
for tracing the former European, Russian and Sephardic communities of
China. [Email: [email protected]] |
