A vast amount of relief, plus rehabilitation and reconstruction assistance, is required by the surviving Jewish refugees in Shanghai, who have been left penniless and, in many cases, ill as a result of four years of Japanese occupation, it was reported here today by Manuel Siegel, JDC representative in Shanghai from Nov. 1941 until the end of 1945.
Siegel, who was interned two and a half years by the Japanese, told a press conference how considerable assistance was given the refugees, who were confined in a ghetto in the Hongkew district, all during the occupation through funds provided by the JDC. He stressed, however, that “years of internment, persecution and brutality are showing their effects on many of Hongkew’s residents” and that relief funds must be increased “if those who survived are not to die now that victory has come.”
Disclosing that 11,000 of the Jewish refugees still depend on the JDC for direct relief. Siegel declared that “it is obvious that the problem of the refugees cannot wholly be solved in Shanghai nor in the Far East, where their future is too uncertain.” How long the refugees will be able to stay in China is still uncertain, he reported. “The refugees themselves are anxious to leave and would like to go either to Palestine or the United States,” he added.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
