If the war with Japan continues for several more years, at least half of the more than 20,000 Jewish refugees in Shanghai will be “useless if not dead,” it was revealed here today by Laura Margolies, Joint Distribution Committee representative in Shanghai, who returned home yesterday aboard the Swedish exchange liner Gripsholm.
Miss Margolies told a press conference that there are now about 20,000 German refugees and 1,000 Polish in the Japanese-occupied city. Despite heroic efforts to feed as many of the needy refugees as possible, there were only sufficient funds to provide one meal per day for 5,000 people at the time Miss Margolies left Shanghai, she said. This money was borrowed locally by the JDC representatives on the promise that it would eventually be repaid by the home office in New York.
The relief problem was complicated, Miss Margolies declared, by the fact that in February of 1942 all stateless persons were ordered to move into the Hongkew section of Shanghai. Many Jewish refugees who had established businesses in other districts of the city were forced to liquidate them or, in some cases, were fortunate enough to trade their shops for ones within the restricted area. The net result of the move, however, was to create more needy persons. The JDC camps were located in Hongkew and fed and sheltered about 8,000 people.
The JDC representative stressed that the Hongkew area was not a ghetto in the same sense as the Jewish quarters in Polish cities, since within the district Jews could work or trade as they wished. Doctors or nurses were allowed out on passes if the need arose. Generally, she said, the Jews were placed under various restrictions as “stateless persons” rather than as “Jews,” and many non-Jews were in the same category and received the same treatment.
Miss Margolies was interned with all other Americans in February of this year, and remained in internment until August when the repatriation began. The other JDC representative in Shanghai, Manuel Siegel, is still interned.
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