Dvir Bar-Gal on Jewish Shanghai

Israeli photojournalist and documentarian Dvir Bar-Gal speaks to Thomas Crampton about Shanghai's Jewish history and intrigues us with what he had to say about Dr Ho Feng Shan, the Chinese Consul-General in Vienna in 1938-9 who was named a "Righteous Gentile" by the government of Israel for using his position to provide visas to Austrian Jews seeking to escape from the Nazis while the consulates of other world powers refused to do the same. This letter by Dr Lotte Marcus addressed to "ex-Viennese Shanghailanders" throws up another interesting fact — in those days, you didn't really need a visa to get to Shanghai and anyone who had the means to come was welcome. By issuing those visas, Dr Ho had provided Jewish refugees the legitimacy of "official" documents which helped them to escape.