The story appears on

Page A3

March 24, 2015

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Metro » Entertainment and Culture

Community plans park to honor city’s Jews

SHANGHAI’S Jewish community is planning to build a memorial park to commemorate the Jewish people who lived in the city in the 1930s and 40s, especially those who contributed to War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945) and Liberation War, officials said yesterday.

The park will include a memorial wall with the names of Jewish residents and statues of doctors, military personnel and professors who helped China during the wars, Maurice Ohana, president of Shanghai Jewish Community said.

“The core idea is to let Jewish people in China come to the park to learn the history and mourn for their ancestors,” Ohana said.

He said he had visited the Fu Shou Yuan Cemetery in Qingpu District to pick a location along with Professor Pan Guang, director of the Shanghai Jewish research center.

Details of the park’s location, size and design are to be announced in June and the park is expected to open in September.

Symbol of friendship

A possible location within the cemetery has been identified, said Yin Hua, deputy curator of the cemetery’s memorial museum.

“The park will become a major symbol for the friendship between locals and Jewish people,” said Yin who will be in charge of the park’s design.

Pan proposed building such a park last June.

“Shanghai had four major cemeteries for Jews but they were demolished later with the urban development. It is impossible to rebuild these cemeteries, but can build a memorial park to keep the history,” Pan said.

Shanghai has about 3,700 graves in four cemeteries for Jewish refugees but there are no immediate plans to move graves to the new park.

Many Jewish refugees took part in the China’s anti-Japanese war. Jakob Rosenfeld, an Austrian doctor who served in the army of the Communist Party of China between 1941 and 1951, and was one of the refugees who took shelter in Shanghai in 1939.

In the 1930s and 1940s, about 25,000 Jews took refuge in Shanghai to escape atrocities at the hands of the Nazis back home.




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend