Strange haven

by Sigmund Tobias

In the wake of Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, Sigmund Tobias and his parents made plans to flee a Germany that was becoming increasingly dangerous for them. Like many other European Jews, they faced the impossibility of obtaining visas to enter any other country in Europe or almost anywhere else in the world. One city offered shelter without requiring a visa: the notorious pleasure capital, Shanghai. Seventeen thousand Jewish refugees flocked to Hongkew, a section of Shanghai ruled by the Japanese. Beginning in December 1938 these refugees created an active community that continued to exist through the end of the war and was dissolved by the early 1950s. In this exotic sanctuary, Sigmund Tobias grew from a six-year-old child to an adolescent. Strongly attracted by the discipline and rigor of Talmudic study, Tobias entered the Mirrer Yeshiva, a rabbinical seminary transplanted from the Polish city of Mir. Tobias's own coming-of-age story unfolds within his descriptions of Jewish life