A Refugee Story in Hongkou: Names, Documents, Neighbors

During the 1930s, Jews in Europe fled Nazi persecution. Shanghai became a destination for about 20,000 European Jewish refugees arriving by sea and land between 1938 and 1941, according to the museum. Many reached the city with limited money or support. Relief organizations helped establish services, while refugees built new routines around family, education, work and cultural life.

This history belongs to a particular moment in a much longer story of Jewish life in Shanghai. It should not be reduced to a claim that everyone had the same experience or that refuge meant an easy life. The museum's records include travel documents and residence permits—small papers that show how a journey across continents became a matter of daily administration, identity and survival.

The museum's core is the former Moshe Synagogue, a place where Jewish refugees gathered for worship and community life. Nearby residential buildings are also part of the museum, allowing visitors to see how the story extended beyond one religious building. Passports, boat tickets and permits donated by refugees or their descendants place individual movement inside a larger history of migration.

In February 1943, Japanese authorities ordered stateless refugees to move into a designated area in Hongkou and restricted their freedom of movement. The museum's exhibition places this chapter alongside stories of mutual help between Jewish refugees and Chinese neighbors. The focus on a neighborhood brings the historical pressures close to home: crowded streets, shared services and the efforts people made to sustain daily life under constraint.

The Wall of Names in the museum courtyard turns a large population into thousands of distinct lives. Its inscriptions grew as researchers, former refugees and descendants contributed and checked names; in 2025 the museum added another group, bringing the count to 19,672. The number can change as the record develops, but the purpose remains clear: to make people visible within a history often told through dates and policies.

The museum's permanent exhibition moves from flight and arrival to life in Shanghai, the wartime restrictions and the postwar dispersal of refugees. That structure lets visitors encounter both the pressures of displacement and the choices people made to rebuild connections. The synagogue, homes, documents and names together offer a respectful way into the subject: history held not only in official orders, but in the traces families carried and the neighbors who shared a city with them.