Newspaper Page Text
Menorah stone is rescued
amid Shanghai shul rubble
by Joseph Polakoff
I Si's Washington correspondent
WASHiNGTON— How a large
granite block bearing the carving
ol a menorah survived the demoli
tion of Shanghai’s Beth Aharon
Synagogue and is now in the Shang
hai Museum building under con
trol of the Shanghai Commission
for Preservation of Relics is told in
the January issue of “State,” the
State Department’s monthly news
letter for its employees at home
and abroad.
The two-page article is by Tess
Johnston, who has been serving
since 1981 as secretary to the U.S.
consul general in Shanghai. Hav
ing set up the consulate-general's
archives, she does historical re
search in her spare time to supple
ment its materials. From that posi
tion, the consulate general helped
to preserve the Jewish relic in
Shanghai.
Accompanying her article is a
rare photograph of the synagogue
as it appeared in the 1930s and
1940s when some 35,000 Jews, most
of them refugees from Nazi-occu
pied Europe,livedthere. After the
Communist takeover in the early
1950s, most Jews departed. By the
late 1940s, the synagogues (there
had been seven) had been sold and
the contents removed. Proceeds of
the sales of the properties were
used to set up “shelter houses" for
Jews awaiting departure, for the
old, the sick or those with no
immediate prospects for resettle
ment.
By the mid-1960s, the last of the
Jews had been resettled and the
shelter houses closed down. Dur
ing their occupation of Shanghai
in World War II, the Japanese “did
not concern themselves with reli
gious services” held in the conces
sions or the foreign settlement, “so
the synagogues continued services
there all during the war,” Johnston
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Drawing of the former Beth Aharon Synagogue of Shanghai, 1945,
Jerusalem, Israel Museum Archives.
wrote.
By 1981, when she first saw the
synagogue, “it had lost all its for
mer splendor. A green plastic roof
covered the entrance-way, block
ing out the Star of David. The
dome was intact but the arched
doorway was truncated, and only
the two carved menorahs revealed
that it once had been a religious
edifice. It occupied a choice site on
the once elegant and prestigious
avenue running along the water
front. Although the building now
housed a printing press, it was the
only Jewish religious building we
knew to be relatively intact, so we
always referred inquirers to that
address.”
Johnston reported that she was
called by two visiting professors—
one of whose parents had fled the
Holocaust via Shanghai—who said
Beth Aharon was being demolished
and that only a heap of rubble
remained along with “one stone
carved with the menorah surface.
They asked to help them save it.
While she hurried appointments
for the professors to meet the edi
tor of the newspaper which was to
occupy the synagogue site and pre
pared to arrange safeguarding for
the stone, she received “an ecstatic
telephone call from the professors.”
On the way to their appointment
at the newspaper, the professors
saw the heavy stone of about four
square feet being lifted by a crane
to be placed on a truck. An English-
speaking reporter from the news
paper came to them and offered to
escort them to the editor’s office.
There they were assured by the
newspaper’s vice editor-in-chief
that it had always been the gover-
ment’s intention to preserve the
stone Menorah. Although the Chi
nese did not want the stone re
moved from Shanghai, they assured
the professors that it would be pre
served for eventual display by the
commission.
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HONOUR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER ^
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The community is cordially invited
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The 6th Annual
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lives of The Jewish Home Residents.
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National Council of Jewish Women
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PAGE 7 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE May 16, 1986