A Sanctuary in Hongkou: The Story of the Shanghai Ghetto

In the northern district of Hongkou (虹口, Hóngkǒu), the streets are narrower and quieter than the grand avenues of the Bund. Here, the low brick lane houses (Longtang (弄堂, Lòngtáng)) are strung with overhead electrical wires and wet laundry hanging on bamboo poles. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, this crowded working-class neighborhood became an unlikely sanctuary. While almost every country in the world closed its borders to Jews fleeing Nazi Europe, Shanghai required no visa. Nearly twenty thousand Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria, and Poland arrived at the docks of the Huangpu River, carrying little more than suitcases and memories of a burning continent.

At the center of this history sits the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum (上海犹太难民纪念馆, Shànghǎi Yóutài Nànmín Jìniànguǎn). The heart of the museum is the former Ohel Moishe Synagogue (摩西会堂, Móxī Huìtáng), a handsome three-story building of grey and red brick built in 1927. Inside, the quiet sanctuary is simple, with dark wooden pews and light filtering through arched windows. The air inside smells of dry wood and old plaster.

Step out of the synagogue and walk through the museum's exhibition halls. The displays are not just about grand diplomacy; they focus on the gritty, intimate details of daily survival in the 'Shanghai Ghetto.' When the Japanese military occupied the city and forced the refugees into a designated sector in Hongkou, they had to share cramped quarters with about a hundred thousand poor Shanghainese residents.

The conditions were harsh. Typhus was a constant threat, summer heat was thick and suffocating, and winter brought damp, biting cold that seeped through the thin brick walls. There was no modern plumbing. Every morning, Jewish refugees and Chinese neighbors stood in the same long queues in the narrow lanes to empty their chamber pots (Maotong (马桶, Mǎtǒng)) into communal waste carts. The smell of nightsoil mixed with the charcoal smoke of cooking stoves and the scent of frying scallions.

Yet, out of this shared misery came a strange, beautiful co-existence. In the lanes of Hongkou, Viennese doctors treated Chinese shopkeepers, and Shanghainese families taught refugees how to light coal stoves in the damp Shanghai winters. A Jewish baker sold fresh rye bread next to a stall selling steamed buns (Mantou (馒头, Mántou)). Children who could not speak each other’s languages played marbles in the dirt together.

On the museum's memorial wall, thousands of names are etched in bronze—a long list of survivors who went on to rebuild their lives in San Francisco, Tel Aviv, and Sydney. But the true story of Hongkou is found in the objects they left behind: a pair of rusted spectacles, a German-Chinese dictionary with hand-written notes, a sewing machine used to make clothes for neighbors, and a battered upright piano. On hot summer nights, the sound of Chopin and Viennese waltzes would float out of open wooden windows, mixing with the clatter of mahjong tiles and the chatter of Shanghainese families eating watermelon on the cool stone steps outside.

Today, the neighborhood around the museum is undergoing rapid change. High-rise developments creep closer, but these few blocks of low brick lanes remain, preserved as a memory of a time when a city that had nothing offered shelter to those who had lost everything.

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Practical Beats

• Getting There: Take Metro Line 12 to Tilanqiao Station (提篮桥站). Take Exit 1, turn onto Changyang Road (长阳路), and walk east for about 3 minutes. The museum entrance is prominent.
• Tickets and Hours: Admission is 20 RMB. The museum is open from 09:00 to 17:00 (last entry at 16:30) and is closed on Mondays. You can purchase tickets at the entrance window using cash, WeChat Pay, or Alipay with your passport.
• Exploring Further: After visiting the museum, wander through the historic lanes of the surrounding Tilanqiao neighborhood. Walk down Zhoushan Road (舟山路) just opposite the museum, where you can still see the distinct brick facades of the lane houses where many refugee families lived, and find the plaque marking the former home of Michael Medavoy, the famous Hollywood producer who spent his early childhood here.