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Jewish museum gifted refugee’s passport
THE Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum recently took possession of a passport that once belonged to a German-Jewish woman who lived in the city during World War II.
Ruth Callmann, who died in 2011 in the United States at the age of 96, fled to China in 1939 with her family to escape persecution by the Nazis.
According to the passport, Callmann was 21 years old when she entered China at Tianjin.
The document contains the permit granted to her by the German consulate in the city and states her profession as “shop assistant.”
After a month in Tianjin, the family moved to Shanghai, which was considered a safer place for Jewish people, and where the young woman would stay for more than seven years.
In 1947, Callmann relocated to the US and settled in San Francisco, where she spent the rest of her life.
In 2009, she made her first and only return trip to Shanghai. While in the city, she visited the refugees museum and met its curator, Chen Jian.
Then in her 90s, Callmann showed Chen her passport from 1939, but declined his request to donate it to the museum.
“She said that the passport and a sandalwood fan she used in Shanghai were too precious to her as they were the only reminders of her time in the city,” Chen said.
Despite refusing to donate the passport, Callmann did later send the curator a facsimile of the document. She also told a close friend, Janis Seeman, that after her death she would like the passport to be given to the museum.
Last week, Seeman made good on Callmann’s request and delivered the historical document to the museum.
She also passed on a message from her late friend, saying that Shanghai had always been in her heart and that thousands of Jews owed their lives to the kindness and generosity of the people of the city.
Chen said the museum will put its new exhibit on display “soon.”
“The passport is such a precious gift,” he said.
“I never thought that she would remember us after all this time.”
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