Book Review: Witness to History: From Vienna to Shanghai: A Memoir of Escape, Survival and Resilience

by Susan Blumberg-Kason /

In his new (but posthumous) memoir, Shanghai Jewish refugee Paul Hoffmann writes about his three most tumultuous experiences. One was enduring six months of Nazi Vienna, the other the terror inflicted by Sargent Kano Ghoya in the Shanghai Jewish Ghetto, and the third life under the new Chinese regime from 1949-1952. Much has been written about the first two, but Witness to History sheds light on the lives of the Jews that stayed behind in Shanghai after 1949.

Right: The terror inflicted by Sargent Ghoya, right, was one of author Paul Hoffman’s three most tumultuous experiences.

Hoffmann started his memoir after his retirement in 1986 and wrote his last entry in 1998, but it wasn’t until 2016 that his daughter Jean looked to get it published. Born and raised in Vienna, Hoffmann was the son of a physician who saw the writing on the wall after Hitler annexed Austria. Oskar Hoffman sent his daughter Licci to the UK through a program to employ Jewish women as maids and nannies. Eighteen year-old Paul was sent to Shanghai.