5 Things You Didn’t Know About Old Shanghai

The Jewish Ghetto & The Final Solution

Shanghai had been home to a substantial Jewish population since foreigners first started arriving at its ports. There were multiple waves of Jewish immigration into Shanghai – Sephardic Jewish traders from the Middle East arrived starting in the 1840s, and European Jews, fleeing from persecution, came throughout the 20th century (from Imperial and Soviet Russia, and Nazi Germany). During the Nazi era, when most countries limited the numbers of Jewish refugees they would take, Shanghai was a safe haven because it was an open international city and foreigners did not need a visa to enter.