Refugees in Shanghai Appeal to the USA – 1947

In the years immediately after the liberation of Shanghai in 1945 the issue of refugee and displaced person (DPs) relocation was a pressing one. Initially America did take in a large number of Jewish refugees stranded in Shanghai – though not all by any means. Others went out to Australia, Canada, Brazil and others places (India, Hong Kong etc etc). But the quota system used by America after World War Two created a problem for the large number of Polish-Jewish refugees, who numbered about 2,000. Most it seems wanted to go to the USA, obviously already with a sizeable Polish-American population but many Poles in Poland also wanted to emigrate to the US.

“It is expected to take many years before the Shanghai Jewish refugees will be admitted” says the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle in December 1947. Actually the communist victory in 1949 would speed up this process but it was still a time of great uncertainty, poverty and unemployment for many refugees stuck in Shanghai having escaped fascism in Europe and presumably not much fancying heading back to a Soviet controlled country now in the Eastern Bloc.