The Shanghai Jewish Chronicle

In 1939 a new paper entered the Shanghai market with an English name but written in German – the Shanghai Jewish Chronicle. Under the editorship of founder Ossie Lewin and two Viennese journalists – Ladislaus Frank and Dr Mark Siegelberg – it became the Jewish community’s paper of record in China and a major challenger to Die Gelbe Post. It was sanctioned by the Japanese authorities and they used to it to publicise instructions to the displaced Jewish community and so it lasted through the War years and longer, renaming itself the Shanghai Echo and remaining in print until 1948. By 1939 there were around 12 Jewish periodicals being regularly published in Shanghai with a host of others that were short-lived. All could be found at Shanghai’s major Jewish run bookstores – The Lion and The Paragon. Ossie Lewin particularly was a fixture of Jewish cultural life in Shanghai; Chairman of the European Jewish Artists Society and an active leader of the German-speaking Zionists in the city. Frank was also well known in Shanghai, editing the Chronicle and also getting into some hard fought fights with the SMC in its dying days while Siegelberg eventually left for Australia where he founded the Neue Welt newspaper in Melbourne.

Hamilton Haus (House), the paper’s offices still stands magnificently in all its 1930s art-deco glory at the corner of Fuzhou (Foochow) and Jiangxi (Kiangse) Roads.