Shanghai GhettoShanghai Ghetto

The Shanghai Ghetto, formally known as the Restricted Sector for Stateless Refugees, was an area of approximately 2.5 square kilometres in the Hongkou district of Japanese-occupied Shanghai. The area included the community around the Ohel Moshe Synagogue. Shanghai was notable for a long period as the only place in the world that unconditionally offered refuge for Jews escaping from the Nazis. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Shanghai accepted more Jewish refugees than Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India. After the Japanese occupied the International Settlement in 1941, the Japanese army closed Shanghai to Jewish immigration. In 1943, the Japanese forced about 23,000 of the city's Jewish refugees to be restricted or relocated to the Shanghai Ghetto until 1945 by the Proclamation Concerning Restriction of Residence and Business of Stateless Refugees. It was one of the poorest and most crowded areas of the city, already occupied by 100,000 Chinese, the local Chinese residents, whose living conditions were often as bad or worse, did not leave. Local Jewish families and American Jewish charities aided Jewish refugees with shelter, food, and clothing. As the war progressed, Japanese authorities increasingly stepped up restrictions of movement and surrounded the ghetto with barbed wire. However, compared with the Nazi ghettos of Europe, conditions in the Shanghai Ghetto were considerably less severe.